


your eyes will tell me secrets your lips dare not say

by lovebeyondmeasure



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, I hope you like feelings and Cormoran pining because buddy do I have the fic for you, I'd say I'm sorry about all the Feelings but....mmm...I'm not, Just Talk About Your Feelings You Fools! You Buffoons!!, Major Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Mutual Pining, Post-Career of Evil, Robin Ellacott's Green Dress, Sharing a Bed, Trains, Undercover as a Couple, Written Pre-Lethal White, so many original characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-01-18 09:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 41,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12385023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: started as a "five times Cormoran and Robin said "I love you," and one time they heard each other" fic, now a low-stakes casefic wrapped up in pining, a fake relationship, and a green dress.--------------------This fic has resumed! Thank you all for your patience. The author hopes and prays to finish it before Lethal White's release.





	1. over a beer bottle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bethanyactually](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethanyactually/gifts).



> This has spiraled out of control, but it's all good. Warnings for swearing and mild marijuana use in later chapters. 
> 
> There's a large cast of original characters, starting around chapter 10. A guide to the OCs, including faceclaims, relationships, and fun facts is available [here on my blog](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/eyeswilltell) (only available in browser view).

At nearly five o’clock, Robin had made it back to the office, bedraggled and tired from the constant rain. The man they'd been hired to follow had a habit of going for long walks while making phone calls, and Cormoran’s leg was simply not up to such abuse in the weather; Robin had been tailing him for most of the week.

She dropped her bag listlessly onto the couch, where it made a kind of squelching noise on the fake leather. Cormoran, restless behind Robin’s desk, where he’d been on the computer for hours, took one good look at Robin’s pale face, her slightly smeary mascara, and announced, “I feel like a drink at the pub is in order. You can tell me about Walkabout over a pint, I think we’ve earned it.”

Robin’s blank stare became one of worry. “Can we- afford that?”

“I got a call from an interested client,” he lied smoothly. “C’mon, I need to get out of this office.”

He followed her carefully down the treacherous stairs, reminding himself once more to call the landlord about getting the lift fixed, knowing he'd most likely forget once again. They walked silently to the Tottenham pub, when Robin shook out her coat while Cormoran ordered a pint of Doom Bar and a white wine.

Sitting across from her at a table, both of them sipping their drinks and not making much eye contact, Cormoran cursed himself for a fool. It had been so very different since-

“So how was Walkabout today?” he asked, tearing himself away from that line of thought with a vicious yank.

“Oh,” Robin said, looking over at him. “Well, the same as usual, I suppose.”

As they chatted carefully, staying on the topic of their single client, the office finances, Cormoran watched her hair dry back into its natural strawberry gold. He was sipping his pint slower than usual, trying to make sure he kept his head on straight.

It’s no good, only talking much to one person, he told himself. You need to get out, chat with some friends. But the thought of ringing up even Ilsa and Nick in his current state felt wrong, uncomfortable. He was no kind of company right now.

Pulling his attention back to what Robin was saying, he nodded and agreed with her that Walkabout was most likely not selling business secrets to his competitor, as their client had thought. 

She coughed, quietly, and Cormoran felt a surge of guilt that she was the one out in the rain every day, paired with anger at his own injury and even, he had to admit to himself, anger that he was unable to protect her from someone so banal as the weather.

“Been feeling ok, then? Haven’t caught cold or such?” he asked diffidently, wary of seeming too solicitous, of making Robin think he thought her incapable of caring for herself. 

“No,” she said, catching her breath and taking a sip- a gulp, really- of her wine. It was nearly empty. “Just a bit chilled. Feel as though I’m soaked through to my bones.”

He offered to fetch her another wine, which she accepted. 

As they sipped their drinks and waited for the food to arrive, Cormoran lapsed into silence, carefully looking Robin over. She was distracted, shivering a bit, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have ordered them a pot of tea instead.

“So,” she said suddenly, snapping back into something like her usual self. “What was the new client interested in?”

“Ah,” Cormoran temporalized, “another wife looking to get rid of her husband, you know how these things go.”

Robin froze, her drink just touching her lip. Cormoran cursed himself for a fool. How could he have-?

“Anyway, she seemed a bit odd,” he invented, trying to break the thrumming tension. “Don’t know if she’ll call back, she seemed to be under the impression that I was going to use Rokeby’s fame to get into clubs and such to tail her man.”

Robin set down her glass, letting her fingers trail through the condensation on its rim. “That’s certainly not how we operate.”

“No, and I told her so. So we’ll see. But either way,” he said, realizing his excuse for taking them out had just been exposed as most likely unprofitable (on top of false), “either way, it sounds as if we might be getting more business soon enough. Perhaps it’s been long enough that we can rebuild our reputation.”

She seemed gratified by his use of “our,” which pleased him, as he’d done it on purpose. Since the day he’d fired her, he felt as if he was feeling his way through the dark, and Robin had the light but had no reason to share it with him. Now that they were in business together again, things were getting easier, but she hadn’t given herself over to that single-minded passion that had been so much a part of their earlier partnership. Cormoran missed it, though he would never say so out loud. It had been heartening, her unswerving belief in the rightness of their now-shared profession.

“I’ll be right back,” Robin said, picking up her bag and heading for the loo. Cormoran watched her go, her drying hair swaying down her back. 

“I miss you,” he muttered into his pint, where no one heard him but the hops. Draining the glass, he stood to fetch himself another. 

He returned just as she did, nearly tripping over her long legs as he turned to get round the table, and she laughed at the expression on his face, the bugged-out eyes and open mouth, as he prevented his pint from spilling onto his chips.

Looking at her eyes, bright for perhaps the first time that week, her cheeks no longer pale from the cold but her usual pink, her hair shining in the dim lights, her laugh ringing out as he’d not heard it in what felt like years, Cormoran could hardly stop himself from saying, “God, I love-”

She stiffened. He froze in panic for the most infinitesimal moment before finishing, “-the chips here, what a goddamn waste it would’ve been to spill my drink all over them. Watch your legs, then.”

She nodded, taking a bite of her own meal, but he could not help feeling that he’d nearly been caught out at something he had no rights to. He swore, as they made inconsequential chat over their food, that he would deal with his feelings, which were springing up as unruly and untamable as his hair. He was about as happy about one as the other.


	2. the smell after the rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's as though they walk on eggshells around each other, afraid of asking the wrong thing, afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Winding down on Friday afternoon, Cormoran had finished with their client, who had accepted their findings with equanimity. Robin had sent off the final invoice, and now they had only to hope that another client would turn up soon.

Cormoran was staring out the window, running through the mental address book for people who might be induced to refer a client to him. To them.

Robin tapped on the door. Surprised, he beckoned her in. They usually chatted at her desk; it was odd to face her across his. 

“I was wondering,” she began, then closed her mouth. Her eyes were off to the left of him, and Cormoran wondered about the tension clear in her frame. Her hands were twisted into hard little fists; not that she was a small woman, but everyone’s hands were small compared to Strike’s, really.

“Go on,” he said, carefully lifting his foot off his desk so he could sit upright, look her in the eye. “I won’t bite.”

She slanted him a look, but relaxed infinitesimally. “I was thinking I might go home this weekend,” she said. “To see my parents. My mum’s sister is visiting, and I haven’t seen my aunt Karen in a few years now. I’ll be back Monday, and you can get hold of me anytime, if you need me.”

Cormoran knew why she was nervous, and knew it was his own fault. She was afraid, now, of putting a single foot wrong, afraid that he would once more withdraw from her the career, the life, that she clung to with increasing fervor and skill. He’d done it once, after all, and the circumstances notwithstanding, it was well within credulity that he might do it again.

“Of course you can go home,” he said gruffly. “Nothing to keep you here, is there? No clients, nothing….”

And again, as last week at the pub, he felt the moment he managed to blunder into a topic they carefully never spoke of. Robin’s shoulders hunched just a bit, as though he’d delivered a physical blow. Nothing to keep her in London, no, nothing at all.

“Sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I just meant… I have no reason to keep you here, and it’d probably do you good, to get out of the city for a while. You must be tired to walking these same sidewalks all the time.”

She relaxed, but it was a deliberate movement, like she was trying to appear unbothered by his implication of her loneliness, her lack of ties. She lived alone, now, in a tiny bedsit, and had few connections, from the sound of it. He suspected that Robin, like many long-time girlfriends, had interacted mainly with Matthew’s friends, and had few of her own left. Certainly few in London.

“I’d like to see a clear sky again,” she said, her voice tinged with longing. “When it rains at home, you know, the world feels sort of… fresh, and clean. Well, you grew up out in Cornwall, you might know what I mean. After it rains here, everything’s just grey and wet. I miss the smell after the rain out in the country.”

Cormoran nodded, entranced against his will by her open face, relaxed now as she thought of her hometown.

“Petrichor.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Petrichor. It’s the- the smell, after the rain. That’s what it’s called.” Cormoran had no idea how that word had been retained, but it often happened to him, odd tidbits of information snagged in the nooks and crannies of his prodigious memory.

Robin’s face warmed, and she smiled at him, standing there across his desk. He had a sudden urge to stand, to look her in the eyes, to- what? He didn’t know.

“I think I knew that, once,” she said. “Petrichor. What a lovely word.”

They remained in silence for a moment, Robin with a sort of gentle smile on the corner of her mouth, and Cormoran couldn’t bear to disturb her. 

“Well,” she said, looking back at him. Cormoran tried to give the impression he hadn’t just been staring at her. He didn’t think he’d really succeed; she’d learned their shared trade well.

“Well,” he said in reply.

“I suppose- I should be going,” she said, as a fresh burst of rain splattered onto the window. 

“I suppose,” he heard himself echo. Couldn’t he manage some words of his own? But the weekend stretched out before him, empty, and now Robin would be out of town, enjoying herself, while he sat in his tiny flat and watched Arsenal lose, most likely. He felt his mood grow sour, and found himself helpless to stop it.

“Oh, Cormoran,” she said suddenly, and hearing his given name on her lips made him feel- it was as though- she hadn’t called him that in so long, no since- not since.

“Yes?”

“I just-”

They stared at each other, one standing, one sitting, across a neat desk, with the rain pelting down outside. 

“I just-” she said again, hands fidgeting. 

Cormoran found himself unable to stand this tension that had strung itself between them once more.

“Gotta hit the head,” he rasped out, lurching to his feet. His prosthetic chafed uncomfortably, but he could go the whole weekend without it, if he did some shopping tonight. He walked to the door. “Have a good weekend, then,” he said. “Tell your mum-” 

But there was no message he could send her mother, her father, her aunt…

“Send my regards,” he finished lamely, clapping her on the shoulder like he might a man. “Drive safe.”

“Of course I will, you know me,” she shot back, smiling a bit. It looked forced, but he looked away quickly, heading to the bathroom on the landing. 

Robin, standing alone in his office, said quietly, “Thank you. You do know that I- care very deeply about this, don’t you? You know how I feel about-”

She could not bring herself to say the final word she had, perhaps, meant to say, not even to the empty room. She turned, gathering her bag and coat, and let herself out, to go back to her family, her mother, father, dog, her aunt Karen, the comfortable, safe space that Cormoran had no equivalent of.

She did not see him as she left the office. She had thought she might, but he was, she thought, hiding from her, from the strangeness that had sprung up between them like traffic tape, overnight. She wished that their dynamic might be as easy to navigate as traffic, but even for an experienced driver like herself, this was a tangle which there was no avoiding. They must simply work their way through it, steadily, with patience, in the hope that the destination might be worth the journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This doesn't actually fit any of the prompts, so the chapter number has gone up so I can still get all the prompts in. I hope you all enjoy pining!


	3. the answering machine's tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A client rings them up; Strike hesitates. Robin does not.

Monday in the office was very quiet. At least for Cormoran; he was adrift without a case. After the veritable boom in business after the Lula Landry case, he’d thrown himself into his work, and without it he found himself realizing he had little else left.

Robin had, with no fanfare and, it must be said, without informing Cormoran, gotten an online job as a transcriptionist, to pay the bills. She sat at the computer, carefully typing out what the men were saying in the series of videos she’d been sent. The videos seemed to be of a series of business meetings, and the men had Slavic accents that slowed her down considerably. But it paid, and that was not to be ignored.

Cormoran hadn’t said anything when she’d told him what she was doing. He knew he had no say in what she did, and that there was barely any money to pay her with. He knew, too, that if a client walked through the door she’d drop it in an instant. So they sat in silence, her typing, him reading. The rain continued.

Robin did, in fact, feel better after spending a weekend with her parents. Of course, she’d barely left the house, trying to avoid everyone else in the village. The odd looks and glares she received had no place in her life; they didn’t understand, fine, she didn’t need their approval. She certainly wasn’t about to explain to all and sundry the complex series of events that had led to her marriage being annulled about an hour after it had occurred. 

She played cards with her father and aunt Karen, walked their old dog with her mother, washed dishes with her brother. She shook off the grey gloom of London, the echoing emptiness that had been growing in her chest, and let her family fill it back up until she felt able to continue on with the life she’d been building for herself.

I did, this, she told herself. I chose this path, and by God I’m going to see it through. And sitting at her desk, attempting to parse out a group of men in ill-fitting suits argue in their accents about stock prices, she tried very hard to remember that resolve.

Tuesday morning, she came in quite early; there was more of the endless construction happening just two blocks from the tiny bedsit she shared with a sweet, quiet German student, and she’d slipped out an hour sooner than usual in an attempt to miss the crowds. 

The message machine had a blinking light, which caught her eye as a deeply unusual sight these days. She played the message, which was long and rambling, as she hung up her coat and switched on the kettle, then listened to it again. By the time she had brewed the tea, she could hear Cormoran stirring above her.

The moment he stumped through the door, she gestured to the cup she’d brewed for him- the exact shade of creosote he preferred- and hit play on the message for the third time.

He sipped his tea, lowering himself to the couch with a minimum of farting noises, as the French-accented man’s voice talked excitedly. Cormoran could feel his eyebrows climbing as the message played, but as he opened his mouth, Robin raised a quelling hand and flicked her eyes to the machine. They listened in silence as the man described what he wanted from them, which sounded completely fantastical, far outside the usual reaches of their work. Cormoran forbore to comment, though, as Robin had clearly heard it already and wanted him to listen to the whole thing.

When the man named the price he’d be willing to pay, Cormoran’s eyes snapped to Robin’s. She nodded. The man finished with a seemingly sincere wish to hear from them soon, then the machine clicked.

He took a long draft from his mug, finishing his tea, before he said anything. Robin sat quietly, clearly waiting for his reaction.

“That’s not at all what we do,” he said finally. “What’s he thinking of, calling us?”

“He’s sent an email as well,” she said, scrolling on the computer. “You didn’t mishear him, either, that’s really what he wants to pay.” The exorbitant sum would be enough to pay the rent on the office for two months, as well as clear his overdraft and pay Robin some of what he knew he owed her. 

“And most client start with a lowball,” he mused aloud. “So it might even be more. But that’s not what we _do_!” 

Robin gave him a look which clearly conveyed that they really didn’t _do_ anything, these days.

“Anyway,” he went on, “it’s hardly something that we’d be able to… it’s not…” But the idea of that much money kept him from denying the client outright.

“His name’s Bartolome Dubosc, and he’s real,” Robin said, turning the monitor for Strike to see. “He does something with market trading in France, and his email says that he heard of us from Engser, the one who hired us to look into Walkabout. Everything seems to check out.”

Cormoran read over what she’d found, as well as the email, mulling it over. It was a terrible idea, really, in every way, but they really needed the money…

Robin felt as though their minds were on parallel tracks; she could see his thought process on his face, and had a moment of surprise that she could read him so well. 

“It sounds like a terribly convoluted idea, the way he’s said it, but it’s not bad, really.” She was trying to put a good face on it; the idea of actually going through with Bartolome’s excited plans was deeply disconcerting for both of them, she was sure, but… the money….

“It’s an awful plan,” Cormoran said, looking up at her finally. “We’d be fools to go through with it.”

“We’d be fools to turn down a job,” she countered, feeling vaguely triumphant, as though she’s subverted his expectations. She could see that he’d expected her to be against it, and took pleasure in surprising him.

“Wouldn’t it be…. uncomfortable? For you?” he asked.

“Should it be? It’s just a job. It’d be, you know, professional.”

Robin had noticed that he didn’t mention that _he_ would be uncomfortable, and didn’t know what to do with the information. 

“Robin,” he said, exasperated, “there’s no way you’d really be OK with pretending to be in love with me!”

“Cormoran,” she replied, his name rising, unfamiliar, to her lips, “I have bills to pay as much as you do, don’t I? Don’t be a tosser about this.”

Cormoran, for his part, was struck by how cool she seemed at the thought of being paid by some eccentric Frenchman to go to a week-long party, pretending to be his fiancee, to see if this Dubosc’s business partner really was seducing the wives of all their clients and thusly losing them money when the husbands found out and left the firm.

“No one would believe that you’re my-” he could not finish the sentence, but forged ahead, “that you’re with me. You’re too-” this was not going well, “beautiful,” he finished stubbornly, against his better judgement. 

She smiled at him then, unexpectedly, and he was struck for a moment by the gentle rise of a blush that he’d caused.

“I have eyes, Robin, and so does everyone else. It’s not believable,” he went on, digging himself deeper. Why was he so against this? He’d prayed for a job, any job, and here one was; why was he fighting such a princely sum of money? He knew, of course, and was loathe to admit to even himself, and so didn’t.

“Oh,” Robin rolled her eyes. “How many wives have we seen who are loads more attractive than their men? I’d be a gold digger, of course.” She did not say that it would not take money for Strike to attract very beautiful women, for of course he’d done it time and again, and rarely brought it up. There was something about him that drew them in, gorgeous and damaged, like he was the protagonist of a cheap romance novel, cursed with women flinging themselves at his feet.

“Anyway, we can hardly turn down a client now,” she said. “I’ll ring him back promptly, if you’re done fighting your own best interests.”

Strike withdrew, setting his empty mug on the counter and closing his office door, blocking out the sound of Robin’s cheerful voice calling back the number left by Bartolome Dubosc. He did not say, not even to himself, that it was not at all in his own best interests to go abroad to pretend to be in love with Robin so she could possibly be seduced by another man. Such a plot belonged to a cheap novel, not his life; but then, wasn’t his life already like a cheap novel? Dead models, ritually murdered famous authors, a leg mailed to his office in a box; why not a strange man offering him far more money than usual to hare off to France to pretend to be in love with his secretary?

Partner, he reminded himself severely. Not a secretary, not a bit. His partner. He could hardly pretend to be in love with her. It wouldn’t be right. He could not think why not, and did not probe too deeply. This was out of character for a man prone to self-reflection, one who prided himself on acknowledging his own flaws and weaknesses, but he did not probe that thought, either. 

Robin, on the phone with a woman speaking rapid, French-accented English, felt an emotion growing in the echoey emptiness of her chest, which she had thought filled by the love and comfort of her family. It seemed there was room for more, however, and she could not say if it was excitement, trepidation, or something else altogether. She only knew that she had not felt this sense of momentum in many months, and she was determined to follow it through, despite Strike’s clear hesitance. Why shouldn’t she have a say in this? And they were in no position to turn down any client, especially one so wealthy as this.

“Monsieur Dubosc? It’s Robin Ellacott, of the Strike Detective Agency? Yes, it’s wonderful to speak with you…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, you read that right: we are heading into a _fake relationship plot _. {fanfare} I hope you all enjoy thinly-veiling pining! The muse has decreed this, and so it must be. I've updated the description, tags, and number of chapter, because I have an idea of where this is going, but Cormoran and Robin will do things in their own sweet time. And I will certainly be fulfilling the original prompts! Eventually.__
> 
>  
> 
> _  
> _Let me know what you think!_  
>  _


	4. train tickets and biryani

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, despite all the best intentions, they can't quite figure out how to talk to each other. Not a good sign, in two people who are about to pretend to be... well, you know.

Robin found herself, over the course of the week, caught in such a flurry of excitement and planning that she had to give notice at her transcription job, citing an ill family member and claiming a desire to return “after it’s all taken care of.” She had no such desire, but knew better than to burn her bridges.

The excitement of Bartolome Dubosc was contagious, though, and Robin managed to set aside her fears about the future in favor of the hectic planning she found herself taking care of, the transportation arrangements, the disbursement plans, the complexities of the client’s needs.

On the Friday following the phone message, Robin felt as though a month had passed, instead of three days. Cormoran had not expressed any thoughts or feelings about their client and their job, other than to reiterate his position that it was a terrible plan that would not work. 

“Oh good, you’re back,” Robin said without looking up as Strike came through the door, dripping wet and bearing biryani. “I’ve been looking into booking our travel tickets. We should be leaving next Tuesday.”

“Rather soon,” he said neutrally, unloading the containers onto Robin’s desk. She glanced up at him.

“The house party Arty’s hosting starts next weekend, and he wants us there a few days beforehand, to get a lay of the land, he says. My guess is that he wants to get a feel for us before it all starts; also, he seems to think that a private detective is the next thing to a spy. So he may actually believe we’ll be, i’unno, planting bugs and reconnoitering and such.”

Cormoran, in the process of digging out real forks in the kitchenette, gave a bark of laughter. Robin smiled.

“Well, I’m hardly about to tell him what we do’s not that special, am I? I hardly want him to think he should pay us any less.”

Bartolome Dubosc, who insisted Robin should call him “Arty,” had in fact been dealing with her directly, instead of through his staff, as she’d assumed he’d do. His reasoning for this was that, as she and Cormoran would be spending plenty of time with him and the rest of his guests, he thought they should build a rapport beforehand. Being treated as an equal, and in fact as an expert in her field, by such a rich and powerful man, had done wonders for Robin’s self esteem and confidence. 

Cormoran couldn’t help but notice this, in the way she spoke more firmly, with more authority; in the way she sat up straight while talking on the phone, as if the person on the other end of the line could see her. She had stopped being quite so reticent with him, and despite his own misgivings about this whole business, he could not regret that, because he had regained some of the old Robin. He’d missed her.

“Anyway,” Robin said, “Arty’s paying for all our transport, but left it up to us how we get there. There are two ways to get to Sauveterre-de-Rouergue.”

Cormoran made sounds of acknowledgement through the lamb biryani currently filling his mouth, and gestured for her to continue.

“Now, I thought,” she hesitated, “I thought I would leave the choice of the two up to you.”

He quirked an eyebrow as he finished chewing. “And why’s that?”

“Well, it’s your leg,” she said, not looking him in the eye. She was looking at the computer screen, so it wasn’t pointed, but he noticed it all the same. “I had thought that perhaps flying wouldn’t be your preferred method of transport.”

“Ah, no,” he said, oddly pleased she’d thought of it. Charlotte had never worried about it much, simply booking them tickets without asking, then cooing over him solicitously as he suffered in the security line, in the waiting areas, on the flight itself. Robin’s consideration of him was- not something to dwell on. “So it’s flying, or?”

“Or fourteen hours total across several trains,” she said, clicking away, her biryani sitting neglected on the desk. Cormoran stabbed a chunk of onion off her meal, knowing she wouldn’t eat it anyway.

“So that's an overnight train plus a few more, or a flight?”

“Well, the flight would still involve a bit of a train ride, but the flight’s only under two hours and so’s the train, so it’s practically a third of the travel time. But,” she said, pulling her food towards her with a shooing gesture at him, “we’re billing the hours and the tickets’ll be paid for, and there’s hardly a rush. So I thought I ought to just leave it to you.” 

She took a mouthful of cooling chicken, coughed slightly, and looked at him while chewing. Cormoran felt warmed by her consideration of his needs, especially when he himself spent so much time denying that his leg caused him to have any. 

“Might as well take the train, then,” he said, and was rewarded with a satisfied nod from Robin. So she’d predicted his response; he tried not to be predictable, but in a partner, being predicted was a good sign. “Can we get an overnighter with compartments?”

“Should be, yeah,” she said through her food, clicking again. “I’ll send you the details.” She swallowed. “Make sure to pack your nicest clothes. Not that-” she glanced at him, wide-eyed- “of course you’d be doing that anyway, I only mean that you’ll be needing them ready to be worn when we get there.”

“Got it, yeah.” He tried for a reassuring tone, and groped for something else to say, to loosen her suddenly tense shoulders. “Should we be all dressed up when we get there?”

“Oh, I didn’t think to ask,” Robin said, making a note. “I don’t know if the staff will be aware of who we are, or if it’s going to be undercover all the way.”

Cormoran snorted.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just,” he managed, “you seem to have embraced our new identity as spies rather handily.”

Her face closed off; Cormoran cursed himself. How did he always manage to say exactly the wrong thing?

“If there something wrong with trying to- to impress upon the client that we know what we’re doing?” she asked, stiffly. “Even if we don’t do this all the time, it’s not totally beyond what we normally do. I was rather successful at being Venetia Hall, and how many women have I been on the phone, and you’ve been all sorts of people, building inspectors and- and undercover as part of the service, you said! You were my brother once, we’ve done this before!”

“And this time I’ll be your-” fiance. The word didn’t come out; it was a loaded word for both of them, it seemed, and Cormoran’s throat closed up on it. “Your fiance,” he forced out. “It’s not the same, not for this length of time. Fooling one person over the phone or in a bar isn’t the same as fooling a whole pack of people for a week!”

He’d played his hand, and hurt her, as he’d been trying to avoid. They needed this job more than ever, and he knew it, and she knew it; nothing he could say would change the fact they were going to go to France and pretend to be a couple. 

Doesn’t mean I have to like it, dammit, he growled to himself. He did, like it, though, in an obscure way that he’d been denying. He ruthlessly continued to ignore those feelings.

Robin was staring at him, white and furious and silent. “I’m doing my best,” she said at last. “We can’t afford to turn this down. You don’t have to be pleased about it, but perhaps instead of telling me I can’t do it, you might consider teaching me how to do it. Just because-” She snapped her mouth shut on the words she’d been about to say, and turned to her computer, fingers flying and clearly not about to say anything further.

Cormoran was simultaneously regretful of the fact that he’d openly doubted Robin to her face, clearly wounding her, and furious- at himself, at their lack of jobs, at Donald Laing for causing their lack of jobs, at this job, at Bartolome fucking Dubosc for hiring them for this fucking job, at-

He leaned back into his chair. Robin stopped typing for a moment.

“You’re welcome to the rest of my biryani,” she said, not looking away from the computer screen. Taking it for the peace offering it was, Cormoran scooped up her half-eaten lunch and carried it to his own office, leaving the door open. 

He tried to concentrate on his research into Dubosc and his business partners and their firm, but found himself drawn back to the truly terrible week facing him: himself, a man whose longest relationship had been sixteen years with a gorgeous harpy, having to pretend to be in a relationship with a woman who had been married to her boyfriend of nearly a decade for a single hour. They were two damaged people with a complicated history, about to pretend to be…. in love.

This is a monumentally stupid plan, Cormoran thought to himself.

Robin, for her part, was focused on the job, and was certainly not thinking at all about how she was to fake feelings for her infuriating, callous, horrid boss- no, partner- who had, in a slightly roundabout way, ended her marriage almost as soon as it had begun. And she was definitely not remembering the sharp cut of his jaw when he was clean shaven, the way his arm felt curled around her waist, the crinkles around his eyes when he really, truly laughed… no, she wasn’t thinking about such things, not at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't responded to every single comment, but please know that I treasure every. single. one. This fic is already so dear to me, and you're all so wonderful, I could cry. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
> 
> Next chapter should be up tomorrow!


	5. launderette realizations and pasta epiphanies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cormoran does laundry; Robin makes dinner. Their thoughts run, once more, on parallel tracks.

On Saturday, Cormoran took his Italian suit to the nice dry cleaners, the one he’d used back when he was a real fiance, not a fake one. The old lady behind the counter took his clothing with every indication of indifference; she did not recognize him. This was fine with him. He rationalized the cost of the cleaners as billable, which made no difference to his overdraft, but salved his pride somewhat. The rest of his clothes went to either the cheap dry cleaners by the office, or the launderette he usually used.

He watched his clothing swish round and round, and came to an inescapable conclusion. He was going to have to kiss Robin.

He’d known this, in a kind of obvious, oblivious way, but he hadn’t articulated that aspect of this whole harebrained scheme until now. They were going to have to kiss, and touch, and gaze into each other’s eyes, and all that sort of thing. 

Robin’s meant to be a gold digger, he reminded himself; it would not have to be completely convincing, at least not on her end. That should make things easier for her. Can’t be enjoyable, having to pretend to be in… a relationship with the man who’d basically ended her last one. Her marriage. 

But he, Cormoran, was going to have to be convincingly infatuated with Robin. What worried him most was how easy it seemed- to let his gaze follow her around the room? It already did, albeit out of worry for her safety. To wrap his arm around her waist? He’d done so, when one of them was drunk or in pain, but he knew well how the curve of her waist slipped beneath his giant paws. To smile at her? He thought he probably smiled more at Robin, with Robin, than with anyone else in his life at the moment. 

But kissing Robin? For the first day he’d known her, when he’d nearly killed her on the stairs and noticed the flashy ring on her finger, he’d known the boundaries. This far, and no further. It had been simple. She was smart, charming, beautiful, funny, but he’d known their limits. He’d never seriously entertained the thought of _kissing_ her.

But now that he had stumbled into the thought, he could not seem to extricate himself from it. How would her lips feel beneath his? Would her cheeks flush brighter than their usual pink? Her hair would be soft beneath his fingers, slip between them like so much golden silk, and she wasn’t short, he’d barely need to bend-

“Fuck! Fuck,” he exclaimed aloud into the silence. The old woman loading a dryer at the end of the row looked up, startled and clearly nervous about the large, hairy man slumped in the uncomfortable chair by the window. 

“Sorry,” he said to her. “Realized I forgot to call my girlfriend.”

The old woman, reasonably satisfied, turned back to her washing; Cormoran pulled out his phone, then stared at its screen. What was he going to do, call Robin to tell her they couldn’t take an extremely profitable job that would take them to the beautiful French countryside, because he was afraid of kissing her? Specifically, he was afraid he would _like_ kissing her?

“Fuck,” he said again, under his breath. This was going to be awful.

==========

Robin was on her laptop as she cooked dinner, browsing through the websites of current fashion designers. The woman she’d be counterfeiting would know all these collections off by heart, she was sure. She hummed along to the radio as she simmered the pasta and stared at a truly hideous dress that cost over ten thousand pounds.

She was incredibly grateful the German student she lived with, Svenja, was very quiet and spent most of her time studying. They split the rent and utilities, and often cooked for each other. 

“I’ll be done in a few minutes, if you want some,” Robin called down the short hallway. She heard a vaguely affirmative noise and went back to stirring the pot.

Her phone buzzed on the table, which she ignored until she had finished straining the pasta, dished it out into two equal portions, poured herself a glass of white wine from the box, and sat down at the tiny formica table. Then she flipped the phone over to reveal three messages from Cormoran.

Taking a bite, she opened them, then wished she hadn’t as she coughed on a noodle. 

**Should use train ride as time to est. cover. Book one compart. Two beds preferred.**

**Should also prepare to touch, kiss, etc. If uncomfortable, please say.**

**Do you know if we’ll be sharing a room at the house party?**

She stared at her phone, at the bald statements shining gently up at her. She’d known, of course she’d known, that they’d have to… that they’d be…. But Cormoran stated it here so factually, methodically, like it was meaningless to him and he only wanted to give her time to brace for such things. To prepare herself.

 _I’ll have to kiss Cormoran,_ she thought, sitting there. Svenja came out of her room to fetch her dish; Robin accepted her thanks without really hearing it. 

_Will we be sharing a bedroom?_ She had been so focused on the details of the business, of the man they’d be dealing with, the travel preparations, that she had overlooked the details that would be affecting her most personally.

How else could they convince people at a house party that they were a couple than by sharing a room?

Sharing a bed with Cormoran? She hadn’t slept next to anyone but Matthew in years and years. He had been a blanket hog; would Cormoran steal the blankets? No, probably not, he ran quite warm….  
Robin realized she’d been sitting at the table letting her meal grow cold as she focused on petty details to avoid the larger issue.

She composed an email to Arty inquiring about the sleeping arrangements, read it over to make sure it sounded professional and detached instead of panicky, and continued to not answer Cormoran’s texts. It was early, she knew he’d know she’d seen them, but she couldn’t face actually typing anything out quite yet. 

Having to pretend to be in love with Cormoran would be… well, she wouldn’t have to be in love with him. In fact, she’d be counterfeiting someone who was counterfeiting affection, which might be difficult, seeing as how…

Robin cradled her head in her hands, some of her hair falling forward into her pasta sauce. _I might have feelings for Cormoran,_ she acknowledged to herself for the first time. _Ones beyond irritation, and- and admiration, and trust._

Oh, _fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be up later tonight or tomorrow morning, because the muse is being generous today. Next chapter: packing, the train ride, and one of the original prompts! Hopefully.
> 
> Sharp-eyed readers might note that the chapter number is no longer noted. That's because I no longer have any idea how long this is going to be. But! We'll get there eventually!
> 
> And as always, your kind comments are the author's fuel. I love all of them and I love all of you. Onwards!


	6. you've made your bed....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cormoran and Robin pack and panic, just a little.

Cormoran packed his suitcase with his accustomed neatness, his military-precise folds. Everything he owned that was nice enough to bring for this fit in one large duffle bag, and he realized as he stared at its battered fabric that they would not be able to step off the train and into their roles. Even if they dressed the part, their luggage would give them away.

He shot Robin a text to that effect, so that she might arrange with Bartolome for a pickup from someone who would be aware of their true purpose. He looked at his three texts from the night before, all unanswered. Had he scared her off? Was she upset with him? Why was he so worried about this?

“Fuck,” he said aloud. “This is going to go terribly wrong.”

He had told her to book a single compartment for them, because they were going to have to become accustomed to spending most of their time in close proximity to each other. The fact that they basically already did so was not lost on him, but it was different now.

 _Different how?_ he knew she would ask. _It’s just a job, like any other job!_ But it wasn’t just a job, it was the longest time she’d ever have been undercover, and relationships could be hard to fake for ten minutes, much less a week, never mind a week while living with the people who needed to be fooled. 

And, he could perhaps admit to himself, here in the privacy of his own mind while alone in his own home, that he had asked for one compartment as a way to force himself to face what he would be doing. It was perhaps masochistic of him, really, but it was true; he was going to force himself into very close proximity to his partner, who he was- fuck, shit, yes, fine, he was deeply attracted to. And he was going to have to pretend he was deeply attracted to her, while also pretending he wasn’t. He was going to have to convince her he was acting while convincing everyone else he wasn’t, and frankly, Cormoran wasn’t sure who he was more worried about convincing.

“I’m a bloody idiot,” Cormoran announced to his flat. He shoved his packed bag off the bad so he could arrange himself to watch the match, but as he tried to focus on the players running up the field, all he could think about was how many ways this could go completely wrong.

==========

Robin knew she would be packing the green dress. It was the very nicest thing she owned, it was certainly suited to the woman she’d be counterfeiting, and- dammit, yes, she knew how Cormoran would react to seeing her in it, and was relishing the prospect.

She was sure he would assume she had gotten rid of it ages ago, sold for the money or snatched by Matthew in a fit of jealousy. In fact, because of Matthew’s reaction to it, she'd tucked it, still in its Vashti box, on the top of a closet shelf, and it had sat, forgotten, until she was clearing out her things. She hadn’t been able to get rid of it; it was a memento of her first case, one of her first successes as an investigator. And it was a token of Cormoran’s respect for her. So she’d left it in its box, had brought it here to sit under her bed, unworn.

Sliding the box into the bottom of her suitcase, Robin considered her closet. Nothing else was really nice enough for the woman she’d be; a gold digger would hardly satisfy herself with the sale racks at Debenhams. Damn. And her suitcase, as Cormoran had texted, was hardly nice enough, either.

Well, Arty had said casually that he would be happy to take care of these needs; he was so eager to be part of something like out of a thriller novel, it was almost endearing. And he had loads of money, and a wife; perhaps Robin could borrow some of her clothing, or at least accessories, and only buy some appropriate basics. 

She composed the email in her head as she assembled her toiletries, her undergarments, her makeup. If she did need new clothes, would Arty allow her to keep them? Perhaps as part of her payment? An intriguing thought.

Having packed everything she could see herself needing, Robin turned at last to her laptop. She would need to book the tickets by tonight if they were to get their own compartment. She’d been procrastinating on it because, if she was honest, she did not want to book them a single compartment and was hoping they would all be taken. 

Alas, there were several compartments still available on the overnight. Only one had two beds, though, and the beds were twin size. 

Cormoran won’t fit on a twin, she thought frantically. If she booked that one, it would be awful for him. Of course she’d fit, if uncomfortably; but his bulk would not rest easy on a twin.

Their other options were a queen bed, or a king. The king was incredibly costly, but Arty had given her a card “for expenses,” and she’d practically been able to hear him winking broadly over the phone. 

Sharing a bed? Arty had told her he’d be putting them in a suite, so they’d have their own bedrooms with adjoining doors, their own bathroom and sitting room, “the better to make your plans in, of course.” So that worry had been averted. But now her plan had backfired; it was either be uncaring of his comfort, which she had been so careful about until now, or share a bed with him.

“This is my own fault. I’ve made my bed and now….” Robin couldn’t help the snort of laughter at her own pun. Well, it was true. She’d done this, she’d have to live with it. She quickly booked the king bed compartment for the Paris to Rodez leg of their trip, and recklessly booked them Business class tickets for the other two legs of the journey. No reason to ride in discomfort; it was paid for, and she didn’t think Arty would care.

She could do her shopping during their layover in Paris; it would be the perfect place to get the wardrobe she should have, if any of this were real.

“But none of this is real,” she said out loud to her room. None of it at all was going to be real, which was half the problem. What if, when they were pretending, it began to feel real? What if the lines they'd always held carefully between them began to blur? Of course, her wedding had changed everything. But this might change everything again. Could their partnership survive so many changes os quickly? What if Cormoran panicked, got angry with her, got tired of her? What if kissing him was terrible? What if it was wonderful?

Robin realized she'd been staring into her suitcase without moving for a few minutes, and shook herself out of her reverie. Her suitcase had plenty of extra space, which she rationalized as where she’d be putting the clothes she’d buy, and she flopped onto the bed bonelessly. She’d have to let Cormoran know about the arrangements; he’d said “two beds preferred.”

Well, preferred isn’t required, is it? Anyway, if he wanted it done differently, he could have booked the tickets himself; she was his partner, not his secretary. There was no reason he should leave all this to her.

Bolstered by her righteous thoughts, Robin threw off a quick text to Cormoran letting him know when and where to meet her, and that they’d be sharing a bed on the train but not at Arty’s. There. Nothing to worry about.

Robin decided to start her Parisian shopping planning online, and tried very hard not to think about how strange Monday in the office was going to be.

==========

Cormoran stared at the text. He kept reading the last lines she’d sent. 

**One bed on the train, but separate bedrooms at the house. See you tomorrow.**

Was she as unconcerned as she sounded, or was she only pretending to not care? That was entirely possible; he himself was using texts instead of a call so he could modulate his tone and choose his words carefully. Perhaps she was concealing her discomfort.

A king bed, though, that should be enough room for them to sleep without touching. Neither of them were small, though, he remembered; he’d have to be careful not to make her uncomfortable. He hadn’t slept next to a woman since he’d managed to break it off with Elin, who’d frozen him out quickly after he'd rung her up; he had no idea how his body would react to the proximity of Robin’s, the graceful curve of her hip…. 

No, he would certainly have to be careful on the train.

 **Thanks for making arrangements. No reason to come to the office tomorrow, unless you have more planning we need to do,** he texted back. **I have errands, sure you do too. Meet at station Tuesday afternoon?**

A few minutes later, his phone pinged to let him know Robin had accepted the extra day off.

He slumped back against his headboard. He felt like a broken record when he thought once more, _this is going to be absolute torture._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, did you really think we were getting out of this without any bed sharing? Please. _Please._
> 
> Next chapter coming soon! Who's excited for train rides! Disclaimer: I have never been to Paris or anywhere else in France and I have never ridden an overnight train, so I'm gonna do my best. Get pumped!


	7. in transit: paris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They begin their journey. Robin shops, Cormoran teaches, they catch a train.

Robin was going to scream. Monday felt like torture. She managed to mitigate the worst of it in that most time-honored of ways: shopping. Arty had emailed her back with his wife’s dress size, which was two sizes up from Robin’s and therefore unlikely to be much help, but that she would she would be more than happy to assist with Robin’s wardrobe, as well as with permission to use the card for clothing. So Robin spent Monday fleshing out her new self by purchasing all-new undergarments at Rigby and Peller and spending some time being pampered at the spa in Harrod’s. 

Manicured, pedicured, face exfoliated, brows shaped, and moisturized within an inch of her life, Robin felt infinitely better. It was as though she had purchased armor; she was as beautiful as she’d ever been, and she was ready for this. Totally ready for this.

Cormoran spent Monday in the office, trying very hard not to obsess over what they would be doing. He read over everything they knew about Dubosc and his business partners, including the junior partner who was supposedly seducing the wives of their clients. His name was Peter Hjort and just from the background information provided to them, Cormoran could tell he was going to be an absolute tosser.

Hjort’s picture showed a blandly handsome face, schoolboyish good looks with blond hair and a grin that some women might find charming but which looked only smarmy. He was 31, young for the position he held, and Cormoran’s guess was that his success had gone to his head and he had developed something of a god complex. Men like him thought they were immune to repercussions, and all too often they were, because of their money and connections.

Not this time, Cormoran thought, staring at the page. Hjort reminded him of Matthew, just a bit, and he wasn’t sure if he was projecting, conflating his dislike into similarities, or if there was something about their faces, their smiles, that matched. He hoped it was the former; being seduced by a prick wouldn’t be fun for Robin regardless, but if this Hjort really was like Matthew, it would be doubly so.

Cormoran ate the leftovers in the tiny fridge, clearing them out so they wouldn’t have to be tossed. He did research into the other partners and clients in the firm, especially the ones who would actually be present; the man he was going to become would know of all of these people, and no knowledge was ever wasted. 

He stayed in his office late into the night, drinking beer and smoking, trying to make sure he’d absorbed all the nuances of the group he was about to walk into. Who even had week-long house parties in the country anymore? Well, the rich, obviously. It was the kind of thing he’d always refused to do with Charlotte. He smiled wryly to think that if she’d known all it took was money to force him to one, she might have managed to get them out to one. 

Falling asleep that night, Cormoran couldn’t stop turning over the thoughts of what the next night would be like; he’d have to go through his whole nighttime routine with Robin there, right there, on a train no less. It could not have been a situation more uncomfortable for him if it had been designed that way. 

==========

Tuesday afternoon, Robin came to the office to meet Cormoran and catch the cab to London St Pancras to catch their first train. Her new suitcase, spacious and empty, rolled smoothly behind her down the street, but she looked askance at the stairs. Was there any reason to haul it up if she was only going to bring it back down? The cab was due in two minutes; she elected to wait. 

Cormoran carried his duffel down in one hand, holding the rail with the other. The fine, misty rain outside seemed to slip through every crack, leaving the stairs slippery no matter how few people walked them.

Robin watched his descent, cataloguing his movements with new eyes. This was the man she was supposedly happily about to commit herself to for life. He was tall, hairy, belly running a bit to fat, but he was also broad and strong, and she knew his protective streak ran a mile wide for those few who managed to be in his circle of friends. 

She rubbed reflexively at her arm, where a long, jagged scar ran, finally fading into pink, and hopefully from there to white. She knew how protective he could be. It was reassuring; no matter what happened, she knew he could come for her. Even now.

“Well,” Cormoran said as he finally made it to the bottom. “Cab should be here. Shall we, then?”

She followed him out to the waiting taxi, and they rode twenty minutes in silence to the station, the radio playing a talk show that the driver was listening to intently. Cormoran paid the cabbie, and they headed inside; Robin had the tickets printed, and they went right to their terminal.

“So I was thinking we’d establish our covers on the train,” Cormoran said casually while they sat waiting for the call to board. They’d barely said a word to each other; each seemed intensely aware of what they were about to do.

“Sure,” Robin replied. “Names, history, jobs, all that sort of thing.”

“And we should establish how we’re going to react to different approaches,” Cormoran said. “We’ll have to tailor our relationship and personalities to suit the mark, so that we become the perfect bait. I know you’ve never done this before, so I want to make sure you’re as well prepared as possible.”

Robin smiled at him, then, with a warm glow in her chest. So he had been listening when she’s practically begged him to continue teaching her. Not having work seemed like the best time to be learning, but he’d been so withdrawn, she’d been afraid to bring it up.

“So we’re going to be engaged, yeah?” Cormoran said, the slightest catch in his voice. “We’ll need to flesh that out, how long we’ve been together, the proposal, all of it.”

Robin looked her her bare ring finger, at the slightly pale strip of skin where her ring had sat for over a year. She held up her hand and pasted on a smile.

“Well, this should be convincing, at least. We can have been together for a proper long time, and I’ve got the tan lines to prove it.”

Cormoran gave her a look of mingled pride and gratefulness; she was going to work to make this as un-awkward for him as he was for her, it seemed. She felt a rush of affection for this man, slumped in his seat with his bad leg propped on her suitcase, who was working past his own issues for the good of their work. She resolved to set aside her own petty grievances and do the same.

“Right, then. We should start with the basics.”

“Names?”

“Ah, no, actually,” he said, a note of apology in his voice. “Most people think the name comes first, but actually we’ll start with backgrounds. Where we’re from, parents, all that. Then we’ll pick names to suit. Picking the name first can constrain the background; this way we get a strong foundation for our characters. Backstory informs everything when you’re undercover.”

“Got it,” Robin said, forcing herself to move past her first guess being wrong. “Backstory’s important.”

“As far as names go, though, you’ll definitely want something that you’ll find easy to respond to. Nothing too similar to your first name, but I’ve seen lads use family member’s names, friend’s names. Just something to keep in mind.”

“So I can’t use Venetia again?” She’d had a vague thought that it seemed the obvious choice.

“Well,” Cormoran hesitated. It was a good choice for a first-time long term case, he supposed. “As long as it suits your background, I don’t see why not. I’ll tell you I’ve been Cameron enough times.”

“Not this time, though?”

“Most likely not; I had figured my background would include inheriting some of my money, and Cameron’s a bit common. Something a little more classic, probably.”

“As long as it’s not awful,” Robin giggled, letting herself relax. This would be funny. It would be fun. It wasn’t going to be awful, not at all. “You can’t be named Michael, it’s my dad’s name, that’d be too weird.”

“Duly noted.” Cormoran found a smile tugging at his lips. The tension between them seemed to have lessened; now they were on a case, on the same side once more. They were going to be all right. 

Their boarding number was called over the scratchy PA system, and the rose, Cormoran hefting his bag and reaching for the handle of Robin’s before she could grasp it. 

“You’ve got the tickets, I’ll get the bags,” he said, smiling for real now. She smiled back, and it was like forgiveness; they were going to get through this together.

The first leg of their journey sped by as they talked and ate crisps from the trolley. Cormoran ordered a beer; Robin, glancing at him, ordered a white wine. They discussed who they would be, with Cormoran giving her tips on how best to flesh out her backstory while leaving enough room for improvisation.

“You need the wiggle room,” he told her, “to tailor yourself to what he likes in a woman. You do it all the time, the same way anyone does, but women are better at it. Code switching, it’s called, when you act different around your mates than around your coworkers, for example. It’s just a more deliberate form of that. You’ll need to figure out if you should be ditsy, or smart, or very into money or looks. Whether you’re a party girl, or a homebody. It all depends on what he’s looking for.”

Robin had almost no romantic experience with men other than Matthew. He tried to remember this as he gave her advice. It was going to be more uncomfortable than she was expecting, he was sure, and he tried to convey that to her without seeming condescending.

He didn’t realize how much Robin had been preparing for this. She knew this wasn’t a field she had practical knowledge of, but she’d been reading plenty, and had called up a few of her old school friends to chat about their dating experiences. They’d been more than happy to pour out their woes to a willing ear, once Robin had steered them away from the topic of her own relationship. Or lack of one. In any case, she’d been doing her homework and bracing for the worst.

“Honestly, he seems like a total slimeball,” Robin said, most of the way through her glass of wine. “Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what he likes in a woman, he seems the type to telegraph it to Bristol and back.”

Cormoran laughed. “I think you’re probably right. Men like that are often so used to their power and money getting them what they want, they have no subtlety at all. But he’s been doing this for quite a while now, and getting away with it. Most likely he’s got a roster of tricks. You just have to decide which ones will work on the character you’re crafting.”

“Fair enough,” she said, and they built themselves from the ground up as they crossed the ocean into France.

==========

Robin and Cormoran exited the train in Paris to try out their new identities: Venetia Rose Ashworth, sweet public-school gold digger who had leveraged family connections to meet her now-fiance at a posh office holiday party for the bank that he, Eric Bunsen, worked at. She had Dubosc’s credit card and was prepared to become someone new, someone with an unbroken heart and a whole lot of money.

Paris was grimy and elegant, the streets between the Gare du Nord station and the shops she was headed for smelling of cigarettes and dead leaves. Lights sparkled everywhere. Robin, her suitcase rolling behind her, craned her neck to take it all in. She’d never been to Paris before, and wanted to absorb it all to tell her mother.

Cormoran, who had seen Paris before and who was not nearly as enchanted with what the cobblestone streets were doing to his leg, hailed a cab.

Robin then spent a blissful hour being kitted out with a week’s worth of designer clothing, the shopgirls only too pleased to make the commision she was about to pay. She sent Cormoran off to buy himself new dress shirts and at least one new suit, and a new suitcase that rolled. She couldn’t stand to see him carrying that poor, battered duffel everywhere. He returned to the store as Robin was shrugging her way back into her own, old clothing. No need to travel in nice clothes; she had no one to impress.

“I’m so glad I at least kept my travel clothes, even if they aren’t fit to be worn in company,” Robin said to the helpful shopgirl who was folding up her last selections.

“Oh, if there’s anywhere in the world to lose your luggage, it’s Paris!” the girl replied, smiling brightly. “To shop here is to shop the whole world, but it’s better, because it’s here.”

“Oh, so true,” Robin replied breathlessly. “Is that you, Eric darling?” she called out from the fitting room, hearing a rumbling male voice through the curtain.

“Yes, dear,” Cormoran’s voice came, sardonically affectionate. “We have a train to catch, so if we could hurry this along...?”

“Of course!” The shopgirls flurried about, packing up her purchases and Cormoran casually swiped the card, paying more than three months office rent for a week’s worth of clothing without batting an eye.

“Not my money, not my problem,” he said to Robin as they hailed a cab. He directed the cabbie to a post office, which surprised Robin until they arrived and she saw what he was about. They boxed up the duffel, along with the clothing no longer necessary after the shopping expedition, and had it shipped back to London. 

“Wait,” she said as he was about to write the office address on the label. “Send it to my flat, my roommate will sign for it. It’ll be safe there.”

He acquiesced with a nod, stepping aside to let her address it to herself, ℅ Svenja. “She’ll just put it in my room,” Robin said. “I’ll bring your stuff back to the office when we return.”

Their cabby took them on a screeching journey through narrow streets to the Austerlitz station, where they’d be boarding their overnight train to Rodez. She tipped the cabbie well, and they walked into the station, now with two rolling suitcases and Robin carrying a much nicer bag.

As they sat in the waiting area for their train, Robin felt the unease return to its place in her stomach; after such a lovely afternoon, now they would be sharing a compartment, a bed. 

Cormoran was staring at the wall. Things had been good, so far. Would it last?

Their train was announced, and as they stood, Cormoran wincingly placing weight on his prosthetic, both were wondering- how awkward was tonight going to be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tune in next time for ~*~bed sharing~*~
> 
> I haven't responded to each individual comment but please know: I read them all, I clutch my heart, I treasure them, I write you more chapters. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


	8. ....now you have to sleep in it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An overnight train to Rodez leaves the station.

Robin had felt bad about the amount of money she spent on tickets, but when the porter showed them to their first-class cabin, those feelings abruptly vanished. It was the most spacious train compartment she’d ever seen, large enough for the king bed, a desk, and a television on a dresser. It, in fact, resembled any one of the nicer motel rooms she’d stayed in.

Cormoran pulled out the suitcase stand from its place on the wall, and snapped it open with one hand. “Would you prefer this or the desk?” he asked, not looking at Robin. 

“What?” she asked, turning to him, not following. 

“For your case. D’you want the stand or the desk?”

“Oh. The desk, I suppose,” she said, as it was closer. He hefted his suitcase onto the stand, then did the same for hers on to the desk. The engine started, and the train lurched slightly before smoothly beginning to accelerate. It was just after 9 p.m., and they’d be arriving in Rodez around 5 the next morning. 

“I’ll, uh, just get ready for bed, then. Mind if I take first run?” Cormoran said, jerking his head towards the tiny bathroom and gathering his things from his suitcase, still not looking at her.

Robin could only blink. It was so early- normally they’d both be up to all hours in the office. Why was he rushing to bed now? Was he planning to go to sleep early, to minimize the awkwardness? 

Well, that’s failed, she thought wryly. This isn’t subtle at all.

Belatedly, she said, “Sure, of course. Do you-” she looked at the bed. “Do you have a preferred side?”

Cormoran froze, halfway into the bathroom. It looked doll-sized in comparison to his large frame. “Ah. Not really. Whatever’s fine with me.”

“Mind if I take the left, then?” She smiled, urging him silently to look at her, to not let this grow more uncomfortable. “I tend to roll off the right side.”

Cormoran coughed a laugh, finally turning to look Robin full in the face for the first time since they’d entered the cabin. “Well, we can’t have that, can we? Right’s fine by me.”

Robin gave him a smile, grateful and relieved. This was going to be fine. 

Cormoran felt her smile like a physical blow to the chest. This was going to be the worst night of his life. Well, not the worse. When had he become so melodramatic? He splashed some water on his face and tried not to overthink this any further. The tiny bathroom they were allotted was barely big enough to turn around in; he eyes the tiny shower stall with disfavor. Well, a night without a shower would hardly kill either of them. Even if the idea of getting in bed unwashed next to Robin was not a pleasant one.

He wiped himself down with one of the tiny, scratchy washcloths and tugged into his pajamas, folding up his clothing. Cormoran had originally planned to stay up as late as possible, so that Robin might go to bed first and they wouldn’t lay in bed next to each other while they were both conscious. Then he;d realized she might have the same plan; better to prepare for bed early, so that he could use his sleep-anywhere skills from the military. 

He nearly went over on the tiles when his sleep trousers tangled on his prosthetic; the soft flannel was loose enough that he could push it up to unhook the damn thing, but it left plenty of room for things to go wrong, as well. With a muffled oath, he caught himself on the sink.

“Everything all right?” Robin called softly. 

“FIne, fine,” Cormoran gritted out. He managed to get himself situated, took a few deep breaths to gather himself, and exited. “Damn thing’s too small to move around in. I’ll just shower when we get to the house, no use trying here and cracking my head on that dollhouse sink.”

Robin smiled up at him from her perch at the foot of the bed. The palatial king bed seemed large enough to leave plenty of room between them; in the absence of separate beds, this would do.

“Fair enough,” she said, looking back at her laptop. She had taken advantage of Cormoran’s sojourn in the bathroom to rush into her own pajamas, a comfortable, completely un-sexy flannel set her mother had given her for Christmas a few years back. It was covered in cheerful holly and ivy, and Cormoran would have bitten his tongue before telling her that far from making her unattractive, it was utterly adorable. 

She sat up, crossing her legs tailor-style, as Cormoran put his clothing back in his suitcase and grabbed his own laptop, swiftly getting into bed on his side, pulling the covers over his legs. Robin looked at him for a moment as he busily situated himself.

“You know, you can take it off,” she said quietly. For a heart-stopping moment, Cormoran didn’t know what she was talking about. “Your… leg. You don’t have to wear it anymore, I know it must be hurting. I won’t freak out on you, or anything.”

She gave him a thin smile. They rarely mentioned his leg in such explicit terms, but here she was again, trying her best to make him comfortable. His heart gave a thump in his chest.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly, swinging his legs back out of the bed to start the process of getting the damn thing off. The gel pad on it was worn thin, but he hadn’t had means to replace it; he should’ve ordered a new one with the expenses card before they left. Ah, hindsight. Robin had turned back to her laptop, humming a bit, giving him as much privacy as she could without making it obvious. 

Stowing his prosthetic in the space between the nightstand and the bed, Cormoran suddenly caught the thread of melody Robin was humming. 

“Is that a Muppet song?” he asked, arranging his legs back under the covers. Robin’s head jerked up, and she blushed.

“Ah, yeah,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “It’s been stuck in my head for a bit; always does when I travel, especially on trains.”

Cormoran was pulling on the thread of memory she had summoned, and hummed, “footloose and fancy free, duh duh duh duh duh, won’t you come see it with me…”

Robin’s face lit up. “Do you know it?”

“Not really,” he admitted, getting the pillows arranged behind him so he was sitting up comfortably against the headboard. There were a shocking number of pillows. “There was a bloke, back in the SIB, we used to call him ‘Kermit’ because he could do a dead-on impression. He would sing Muppet songs when we were having a bad day. He was a bit of a ham.” Cormoran smiled at the memory. “He was one of the ones who trained me and some of the ones I went in with. Damn good man.”

Robin curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She felt a bit as though they were having a primary-school sleepover, sharing secret after lights out, and the comparison amused her. 

“So you learnt Muppet songs in the military?”

He smiled at her. “Guess you could say that. He’d sing songs to his kids on the phone, too, when we were gone on long trips. I can just hear him now, singing that one about rainbows.”

“The Rainbow Connection? Oh, I love that one!”

“When he died, his kids sang it at the service. Made the whole damn lot of us cry, I tell you that.” Cormoran relayed the memory, looking up into space, hearing the wavering voice of Sgt. Gorthrat’s eldest daughter as she made her way through the verses. “He was a good man.”

Robin was imagining the song being sung at a funeral and felt tears rush into her eyes, unbidden. “That’s a beautiful song to have at a service,” she said. “God, I’m crying just thinking about it!” She laughed self-deprecatingly as she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Wow, how touching.”

Cormoran coughed, not sure what to say. He hadn’t meant to share that; he rarely talked about those days, and he certainly hadn’t meant to make Robin cry. This was not going well even by his low expectations of the night.

“I’d better get my makeup off,” Robin said, getting off the bed to rummage for her toiletry bag. “No use having smeary mascara, even with just us here.”

She slipped into the tiny bathroom and closed the door behind her.

Things were going to be fine. They were talking, weren’t they? Things were going well. Stop worrying, she told herself firmly in the mirror. You’re both adults, you can handle this. Just put a good face on it and you’ll be fine.

When she reemerged, face scrubbed clean and teeth brushed, it was to Cormoran typing on his laptop in his accustomed two-finger style.

“What are you working on?” she asked, returning to her spot at the bottom of the bed. It seemed the safest place for the moment. 

“Adding to the document about what we know about Huhjort,” he said, clacking away.

“Would you like me to type it up? We can talk it over while I type, and I’m, well, faster.” She pulled her laptop onto her lap and opened the shared document, watching the letters slowly appear on the screen. Cormoran stubbornly finished the note he was writing, then closed his laptop with a sigh. 

“Yeah, might as well,” he said, gesturing at her in a go-ahead sort of way. “I was just putting in that he seems to go for women in seemingly happy relationships. That contributes to the clients leaving Dubosc’s company, because the men thought they had good relationships and the women stepped out behind their backs, as it were.”

Robin added this in, fingers flying. “Would you think it’s because he enjoys the challenge? Or something else?”

“It’s at least partially that,” Cormoran said, nodding approvingly. “So you’ll have to be happy with me, with just enough disinterest to let him know he’s got an in with you. Most likely. We’ll see what he’s like when we get there?”

“Mmm. You know his name’s pronounced like heart, right?” Robin asked, still typing. “I looked up how to pronounce everyone’s names at this party, so we won’t be caught out on such a silly slip. He’s Scandanavian originally, so it’s spelled h-j-o-r-t but pronounced heart.”

“I like calling him Huhjort, though” Cormoran said. “Fits him better.”

“Be that as it may,” she said distractedly, fixing the formatting of some other notes he’d entered into the document. “We should have codenames for him, anyway, like usual. Just in case.”

“I’ve been calling him a wanker in my head,” Cormoran said facetiously. Robin gave him a glare tempered by a smile. 

“He does look like a git, doesn’t he? Well, at least the money’s good.”

Cormoran continued to be reassured that Robin shared his opinion of their mark, and couldn’t have articulated why. Robin’s phone buzzed.

“Oh, it’s my mum, she’s asking how Paris was,” Robin said, opening the text. “I’ll just let her know, then I suppose we ought to go to bed. It’s nearly ten, and we’ll need to be up early. We arrive at five, and we’ll want to be awake for that.”

Cormoran slid his laptop onto the bedside table shelf and wriggled his way further under the covers. His plan to go to sleep early, before Robin, had failed; they were going to lay next to each other in the dark. 

Sending her text, Robin set her phone to charge and scrolled to make sure she had three alarms set. “Shall I put out the lights?”

“Sure,” Cormoran said from his spot beneath the blankets. The lights flicked off, and Robin crawled into the bed in the dark. She settled down, twisting until the pillows were arranged to her satisfaction, ignoring the way the blankets were pulled taut by Cormoran’s bulk a scant two feet away.

They lay in the darkness, the rocking of the train a kind of lullabye, both pretending they weren’t listening to the other’s breathing, both evening out their breaths so as not to seem to be nervous. 

Finally, Robin could take no more. She said softly into the darkness, “I was thinking...”

“Mm?” Cormoran saw no reason to pretend to be asleep. They would both know it was a lie, and that was a poor foundation for a fake relationship.

“Should we have gooey pet names for each other? I feel as though every happy couple I know had some inside joke like that.”

She did not say that Matthew had rarely called her anything but her name, towards the end, when he had addressed her at all; Cormoran’s brain went straight to “Bluey,” which was not a place he wanted to be at the moment.

“Like what?” he asked, hoping Robin would say something to get his mind away from Charlotte.

“Oh, I don’t know. My cousin’s husband calls her ‘pudding pop’ and she calls him ‘smoochy,’ which frankly makes me want to gag. But they certainly seem like they’re quite happy together.” Robin said this staring straight up at the dark ceiling, hoping to get a laugh out of him, to break the tension simmering between them in the darkness. The bed seemed at once very large and very small.

He barked out a laugh, loud in the stillness of night. “Sorry, that’s awful,” he said. “Pudding pop, jesus. We can’t do that, I’ll never say it with a straight face and it’ll give us away immediately.”

Robin was now smiling. “So I can’t call you smoochy?”

“Over my dead body, maybe,” he said. “Can’t we just use darling or sweetheart or something?”

“No,” Robin insisted, “I think it’ll help us flesh out Venetia and Eric a bit more. What would he call her?”

Cormoran studied the lights flickering by on the wall. “He’s a quiet kind of bloke, not too wordy. So not something too flowery, I think.”

“She’d like flowery, though,” Robin objected, turning to face the lump that was Cormoran. She couldn’t see him, but that wasn’t the point. “Venetia’s a girl who likes to be thought of in flowery terms.”

“Fine, but nothing too mushy. I’ll choke on it.”

“What if it’s something about how I look? Then you can think of it as a descriptive term, maybe?”

Cormoran considered that. “Not a bad idea. About your hair?”

“Well, it’s my most distinctive feature for sure, so that makes sense.”

“Goldie?”

This was met with silence.

“I can practically hear your glare. Fine, then. Sunshine? Lemon drop? Buttercup?”

“Oh, Buttercup, that’s good. Definitely flowery,” Robin said, smiling.

“I could call you Buttsy,” Cormoran said before his brain caught up with his mouth. He immediately cursed himself in three languages.

Robin, shocked for a moment, began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. “Oh! Oh, that’s awful, my god,” she gasped. “Buttsy! Jesus, Corm, what’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry,” he said, smiling unrepentantly up at the ceiling. She couldn’t see his face, but could hear his tone. 

“You’re not sorry at all! Buttsy. What were you thinking? You’ve ruined it now.”

“Sorry,” he said again, still not sorry. “Not Buttercup, then. Daffodil?”

“What, so you can call me daffy? Please, Cormoran, some credit, I beg you.”

Curled on her side, her stomach aching from laughter, Robin could not think why she had been so nervous about this. They were adults, they were friends. None of this was too terribly strange. 

Cormoran was wracking his brain for a nickname that would suit both Venetia and Eric, and Cormoran and Robin.

“Well, what would Venetia call Eric?” he asked, trying to deflect.

“Oh, something about your size, I’m sure,” Robin said immediately. “My big guy? My hunk? My chunky rabbit?” She said the last one only to hear him laugh again, which he did, an incredulous noise.

“Your what? Chunky rabbit? No, no, get out, I’m kicking you out.”

Cormoran heard himself bantering with Robin as they lay together in the darkness with a kind of detached disbelief. Who was this man who could chat comfortably with his partner while sharing a bed with her? Of course, absolutely nothing romantic was happening, or would happen, but still. This was a situation so far beyond his depths that he was shocked it hadn’t gone to pieces yet.

“What about Fozzie bear?” she asked, thinking back to their earlier conversation. “My Fozzie.”

Cormoran said, as drily as he could manage, “Wocka wocka.”

Robin burst into laughter again, and this time Cormoran let himself laugh too, and then they were just two people enjoying a train ride through the French countryside. 

“I like the bear idea, though,” he said at last, as Robin took deep breaths to control her laughter. “That rings true.”

“You are rather large and hairy,” Robin said thoughtfully. “Panda bear? No. What about teddy bear?”

“That could work,” Cormoran said, turning it over in his mind.

“Oh, he’s just a big soft teddy bear, really,” Robin said in her Venetia voice, which was slightly higher pitched and breathier than her usual voice. It made her sound fluttery and young, which was absolutely the point. 

“Yeah, I’d respond to that,” Cormoran said without thinking. Realizing a beat too late how that sounded, he went on, “I think it fits with Eric and Venetia. I can see it.”

“Oh, come on, teddy,” she said, still in her Venetia voice. “What’ll you be calling me, then?”

“Miss Piggy?” he asked, to more laughter. 

As they settled in, both infinitely more comfortable than they’d been a half hour previous, Cormoran said, “Why don’t you let me sleep on it. I’m sure Eric calls Venetia something sweet.”

“Just let me know, teds dear,” she replied. In her normal voice, she went on, “sleep well, then. I’ve got alarms set for 4:20 and 4:30, so we’ll have time to get up.” Her voice was broken by a long yawn.

“Thanks,” Cormoran replied, catching her yawn. “In the morning, then.”

“In the morning.” Robin snuggled down into her pillows, feeling warm and safe and happy in a way she had sincerely not been expecting from this train ride.

Cormoran awoke to the blaring of an unfamiliar alarm and the texture of hair in his mouth. Spitting, he cracked open one eye to see a light on Robin’s side table, clearly her phone. Glancing down, he saw Robin’s face, scrunched from sleep, beginning to blink awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd feel bad about the cliffhanger, but you just got three thousand words from me, so, mmm, I don't. We'll pick up from there next chapter! Also, this is entirely unbeta'd and unedited, just written, skimmed, and posted, so I apologize for any typos or unclear bits. I'll clean it up tomorrow.
> 
> I hope the bedsharing lived up to your expectations. I gave them a king-size, so they were hardly squished up next to each other from the get-go; I know some of you were hoping for that. I'm not a cruel god, though. And... no spoilers, but this might not be the only time they're forced to share a bed ;)
> 
> As always, your comments are wonderful. You're all wonderful. Thank you.


	9. in transit: rodez

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An overnight train arrives. Another train leaves the station.

The blare of her alarm woke Robin, who scrunched her eyes shut and burrowed further into the chest she was snugged up against.

“Turn that off, would you, babe?” she asked, still half asleep. “Could do with a few more minutes.”

Everything was so comfortable. The sound of the heartbeat by her ear, the arm wrapped cozily around her shoulder and over her waist, the rock of the train- the train? Robin came awake all at once, pulling back to see, not Matthew as her brain had assumed, but Cormoran, who was staring down at her with eyes wide as saucers. 

“Oh, Christ,” Robin swore, scrambling to untangle her legs from Cormoran’s, pulling her hair back behind her head and smoothing it down from the bird’s nest tangle she was sure it resembled.

Cormoran, normally so quick to move, had frozen. The sight of Robin, soft in sleep, curled up at his side, the feeling of her body pressed alongside his in a way that had been missing from his life for so long- all he could do was lay there, looking at Robin, the pink of her cheeks, the sweep of her eyelashes. “Sorry,” he coughed, mouth dry. “Sorry.”

“No, Jesus, I’m the one who’s sorry, you didn’t sign up for that,” Robin said, scooting with as much grace as possible back to her side of the bed. “I told you I fall off the bed on the right side? It’s because I tend to turn to the right in my sleep, so I must’ve rolled over to you, God, I’m so sorry.”

She kept her back to him as she turned off her alarm, the silence ringing as much as the unpleasant noise had. It was 4:20 a.m.; they’d be arriving in forty minutes. Robin pressed her hands to her cheeks, feeling their bright flush; she was mortified, absolutely mortified. This was so far past their professional boundaries. 

“Mind if I take first go at the bathroom?” she said, trying to sound normal. “I’ll just get myself cleaned up. We’ll be in Rodez in about 40 minutes, so there’s plenty of time to get ready.” She could hear the frantic note in her voice and didn’t know how to stop it.

Cormoran made a noise of acquiescence and Robin bolted for the safety of the bathroom, grabbing her toiletry bag from the desk. Staring at her reflection, wide-eyed and messy-haired, Robin could only think- why did she have to get them a single bed?

Cormoran flopped back down onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, still dark. Fuck, fuck, fuck, she couldn’t even look at him now. He hoped he’d pulled his arm back from where it’d been wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer, quickly enough that she wouldn’t remember it. Waking up with his arms full of Robin, his face in her sweet-smelling hair, was most certainly not how he’d thought this day would go. He couldn’t stop thinking about how easily she’d fitted into his side, how comfortable she’d looked with her face resting just on his shoulder, tucked into towards his neck.

Jesus, Strike, pull yourself together, he told himself, scrubbing one hand down his face. You have to remember the boundaries. You’re going to have to talk about this.

He thought, fiercely, of awful things, dead bodies and dead-eyed men, to force his body’s reaction to Robin’s closeness to abate. He’d have to deal with that later, once they were apart from each other, and certainly not while thinking of how smooth her skin had been where the soft flannel had rucked up and his hand had laid on her stomach-

“Fuck,” he said quietly to the ceiling. The ceiling didn’t care about his dilemma. He could hear Robin in the bathroom, plastic clatters, running water. Was she as conflicted about this as he, or was she simply embarrassed? Was she- god, was she scared she was leading him on? This was a clusterfuck. Cormoran went back to rubbing his face, as though it would erase the memory of how they’d awakened.

Robin washed her face, hoping it would clear her mind. She’d spent so long sharing a bed with Matthew, it was natural that she would gravitate towards Cormoran, right? Her unconscious self clearly thought she was supposed to be there, right? God, what a mess, she thought, about both her hair and the situation. How am I ever going to untangle it?

She came of the bathroom a few minutes later, her blush abated, still running a brush through her hair. Cormoran was just finishing getting his prosthetic back on, and without thinking she offered him a hand up.

He looked at her hand, and up at her, without comprehension; Robin felt her blush threaten a reappearance, but held firm. “The bed’s rather low, thought you might want some leverage getting up,” she said. 

“Ah, thanks,” he said, taking her hand. She braced herself and gave him a bit of a pull, and he came up to his feet, suddenly taller than she. They looked at each other, standing close together in the tight confines of the space, faces indistinct in the slowly lightening gloom. Staring up at him, Robin had a sudden mad thought that he was going to step closer, wrap his arm back around her waist-

“Mind if I, ah,” Cormoran said, clearing his throat, and she stepped out of his way so he could collect his own things and disappear into the washroom. 

“I’m going to change while you’re in there,” Robin called, “so can you give me a few minutes please?”

“Yeah, fine,” Cormoran said, squeezing out his toothpaste. 

Robin hastily pulled out of her suitcase a pair of jeans that were of a nice brand but comfortably secondhand, one of her nicer blouses and a matching scarf. Tugging on one of her new bras, she saw the tag was still attached, and yanked it off without thinking, dropping it into the tiny wastebasket. She dressed herself quickly, not wanting to leave Cormoran trapped in the tiny washroom; once she was decently covered, her holly-and-ivy pajamas folded away, she let him know it was safe to come out.

“We’ll be arriving in about half an hour,” Robin said, “then our next train leaves about twenty minutes after that, and when we get to Naucelle Arty’s going to have a car waiting for us. We’ll have breakfast with him and his wife when we arrive.”

“Fine, good,” Cormoran said, going back to his bag. “Mind if I?”

“Oh!” Robin said. “I’ll just, ah, nip in to do my makeup, then.” Grabbing the necessary bag, she went back into the bathroom, concentrating to getting her moisturizer on and her eyeliner neat to distract herself from Cormoran changing just a few feet away. She was stroking on a touch of mascara when he said her name.

“Yeah?” she asked through the door.

“What’s this?”

Robin popped her head back out to see Cormoran holding up the tag from her bra. Her blush seemed to be a permanent fixture on her face today.

“It’s a clothing tag, obviously,” she said, trying to deflect. “Can I come out?”

“Yeah, sure, but I recognize the brand. Why are you wearing a brand-new bra?”

Cormoran wasn’t sure why he was so fixated on this. Seeing the tag sitting there, he’d flashed back to the many times Charlotte had come home to parade some new set for him, to pull him back into her orbit. He had a clear idea of what it meant when a woman bought new underthings.

“What?” Robin’s reasoning for her Rigby and Peller spree deserted her for one long moment.

“You know that you’re not going to actually have to sleep with him, right? Huhjort? That’s not part of your job, your precious Arty can’t possibly expect that from you. You shouldn’t feel pressured-”

“Cormoran! No! That’s not what- you really think I was planning to sleep with him? Although certainly my old things would give the game away,” she said, not allowing herself to feel shame at this discussion of her underthings with a man, with her partner, with Strike specifically. “So that’s not a bad thought. But really I bought new things because I could afford nice ones, and I wanted them, and I thought that Venetia was the kind of girl who would always wear the best she could afford. I was thinking about the role, not- not-”

“I’m sorry,” Cormoran said, turning away and taking a deep breath. “Of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions, you’re a smart woman, you know better. Sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Robin said, touched by the easy way he called her ‘a smart woman.’ Not a clever girl, but a smart woman. “You’re just looking out for me. I wouldn’t do anything like this without you, you know,” she admitted suddenly. “You make me feel safe.”

“Oh,” Cormoran said. He was trying very hard to dissuade his brain from lingering on the image of Robin in one of the frothy confections Charlotte had always brought home. “I’m, ah. Glad. That you know I’m looking out for you. You’ve got much the more difficult part in this. I suppose I’m just… worried.”

Robin looked at him, not saying anything. She had her public face on already, and Cormoran found himself missing the clean-faced Robin he’d woken up to. She was always beautiful, of course, but there was something intimate about seeing her without makeup.

“I’m not worried that you can’t do it, obviously,” he said, catching hold of his thoughts. “I’m worried that something will go wrong and you’ll be caught in the middle of it.”

“Things happen, Cormoran,” Robin said, unconsciously rubbing her arm, where a long, jagged scar was concealed by her sleeve. She always wore long sleeves now, which was unremarkable in this weather, but Cormoran noticed. He felt as though he noticed everything. “Things happen, and we get through them. I know I can rely on you. We’ll be fine.” She looked back up at him. “You’ll see.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

The train began to slow beneath their feet. The last of Robin’s alarms- 4:50, time to pack it in- began to chime. 

“Why couldn’t we have woken up to this one?” Cormoran asked jokingly, turning back to his suitcase to get everything back in. He ruthlessly shoved down his two Italian suits under his pajamas. Someone would take care of them when they arrived.

“Don’t forget your laptop,” Robin reminded him as they took stock of the room. Cormoran fetched it back from the bedside table, slipping it into its place in his bag. 

“Think that’s it,” he said, setting his suitcase on the floor. “Here, give me yours. You’re in charge of tickets and money, I’m in charge of luggage.”

He gave her a smile that seemed to smooth away the wrinkles of their morning. 

“I think it’s time for coffee,” Robin pronounced. “Seeing as how it’s 5 in the bloody morning.”

They shrugged on their coats and followed the crowd off the rain and into the station, where Cormoran found them a tiny bistro table and Robin fetched two cups of coffee and a selection of pastries. Watching Cormoran inhale two croissants before ambling over to a doorway to smoke a much-needed cigarette, Robin sipped her drink and contemplated the day ahead of them. 

A man in an official-looking outfit called for boarding their train to Naucelle, and Robin waved a hand to get Cormoran’s attention. He stubbed out his smoke and came over, and they were once against swept up in the crowd headed for the train.

Cormoran was not above using his bulk and general demeanor for selfish gain, and he used it now to secure them a compartment to themselves. Robin laid down on the bench seat, propping her head on her new bag and closing her eyes. 

“I feel as though I’ve been on trains for years,” she said. “Do we live on trains, now? Just endless tracks.”

“Mm,” Cormoran agreed. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about something since they’d woken up entwined and then had argued about her- argued about the tag he’d found.

“Robin?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s a dangerous sentence if I’ve ever heard one,” Robin said, eyes still closed. “What is it, then?”

“We’re engaged, we’ve been engaged for what, seven months, we need to be comfortable with each other.” 

She cracked an eye. “Eight months. And my little speech about trusting you doesn’t cut it?”

“I mean…” He grasped for words, gave up, and stated it baldly. “We need to be prepared to kiss each other. And such.”

Now both her eyes were open. Hadn’t she known this? And yet-

“Well, yes,” she replied, licking her suddenly dry lips. “Of course. Venetia’s rather clingy, I’ll be hanging off you quite a bit.”

“So,” Cormoran said forcefully. “I was thinking we should get that out of the way. We need to look like we’ve been doing this for months. You can’t flinch away from me, and I can’t startle when you grab me.”

“You want to practice?” Robin knew, intellectually, that this was a good idea. It was also a complete blurring of the boundaries that had once seemed so firm, so immutable. Kissing as Venetia and Eric was one thing, but kissing as Cormoran and Robin?

“We need to be comfortable with each other,” he repeated. _Oh god, oh god,_ he was thinking, _I know we need to do this, but jesus, god, why._

“Alright,” Robin said, sitting up. “Shall we practice now?” She was trying her best to be professional about the whole thing. 

“We have privacy now- as much as we’ll ever have, anyway,” he said. “Might as well.”

They sat still, looking at each other, for a long moment. Robin heaved a sigh. “I’ll just come over to you, then.”

“Yeah,” Cormoran said. He patted the spot next to him on the bench. “Why don’t you come over like Venetia would.”

“Sure,” Robin said, relieved. Venetia wouldn’t be nervous about this. Venetia was quite pleased with her fiance. She stood up, swaying with the train, and let herself be pulled into Venetia.

“Hello, there, teds, miss me?” she said in her Venetia voice, sliding in next to him and curling up into his side. He reflexively wrapped his arm around her back to keep her steady.

“Of course, kitten,” he said, the term of endearment just slipping out. His voice hardly changed at all, but she could hear the difference, an ounce deeper, a touch rounder. She scrunched up her nose at him, and he laughed. 

“Well, aren’t you going to kiss me hello?” she pouted, using the memory of one of the girls from uni guide her. The girl had not been popular with the other girls, but the boys she knew were wrapped around her finger. Robin thought Venetia might be a bit like that.

“Come’re, then,” Cormoran said, sliding his hand up her back to cup the back of her head. He let his finger sift through her hair, just as soft as he remembered. Then, suddenly, he stopped.

“Something wrong?” Robin asked, back in her normal voice, faces inches from his.

“No, it’s just- ah, fuck,” Cormoran said. “I just. Ah.” He pulled back. “I don’t want you to forget that this isn’t real. It can be easy to let it become your reality, but I want you to know that when it’s just us, you don’t have to pretend. I don’t want it to become confusing.”

“Yeah, sure, Corm,” she said, more confused by his sudden changes of topic and behavior than anything else. “Is it something I did?”

“No! No. I’ve seen it a lot, that’s all, when someone who’s not used to this work does it for the first time. It’s not you, it’s just the nature of the job. I want you to know that no matter what, we can always leave Eric and Venetia at the door.”

“I’ve got it,” Robin said, setting on hand gently on his knee. “I hear you. I won’t get confused, I promise.”

He looked over at her, at the way she was looking at him. 

“Oh, fuck it,” he said, and leaned forward, his hand slipping around her cheek to her neck to pull her in, her surprise rendering her pliant. Ducking his head down, he pressed his mouth to hers.

Robin was shocked still for a beat, then leaned into in, letting her body take over- her hand on his knee pressing down as her whole body inclined forward, her other hand coming up to rest on his shoulder, their mouths shifting to turn a dry, firm meeting into a softer, gentler caress. Robin allowed her lips to drift open, just a touch, and Cormoran pushed forward, seeking-

He jerked backward, pulling his hand from her neck, from her leg. Robin blinked at him, startled by the easy way they’d moved together, the heat suddenly present between them.

They stared at each other once more, the flickering knowledge of the kiss between them. Her eyes darted back to his lips; his hand moved back towards her, thoughtlessly, and she thought perhaps he’d lean forward, do it again-

“I’m going to the washroom,” Cormoran said, standing abruptly. “Be right back.”

Robin watched his departure from their compartment, hand floating up to touch her lips. She could feel the scratch of his stubble on her cheeks, nearly taste the scar on his lip. 

“What on earth is he about?” she asked the empty compartment. “Don’t get confused, he says. Don’t get confused, then kisses me? What was he bloody thinking!” Robin let the heat of her anger sweep away the heat of the kiss. She could not let her thoughts linger on the way his hand had been so firm on her neck, like an anchor, the way he had felt inevitable, the feeling like bubbling champagne filling her stomach. No, be angry, she decided. It was safer than the alternative.

Cormoran, wiping water off his face over the sink, had the feeling he’d just made a terrible mistake. Their train ride would end in- he checked his watch- ten minutes. What then?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no apologies for anything. None. At all. (Were you expecting their first kiss this chapter? No? Neither was I! Thank LindMea for that one!)
> 
> Next chapter: we meet Arty and his wife, and the plot starts! Gosh. Finally.
> 
> I've been thinking: there are some scenes I have in my head that didn't quite make the cut for this fic. Would anyone be interested in an "outtakes" fic? I might even take requests for moments you wish had been bigger. Let me know! (The other side of this would be that updates might slow down as I write the outtakes. So. We'll see if there's interest.)
> 
> As ever: I love you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


	10. second breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cormoran and Robin arrive in Sauveterre-de-Rouergue. Welcome to the plot. And bacon.

Cormoran didn’t return until the train was already slowing; Robin had sat alone in the compartment, letting her anger at his behavior simmer. He came into and grasped the handles of their bags briskly, as though he had never kissed her. Robin stared at him, mouth open.

“There’s a car waiting for us, right? We’d best be off,” he said, tugging their luggage into the hall. 

“What- yes, we should, but- Cormoran!” Robin practically hissed out his name. “We have to talk about- you can’t just do that!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, walking along ahead. Robin couldn’t see the look on his face, the tension, the apology. She only saw his back, which was uncommunicative in the extreme. He grasped for some topic change, something else to talk about.

“You said we don’t have to be in persona when we’re picked up, right?”

“No, Arty’s sending one of his personal assistants, they know what we’re doing here. But Corm, we have to talk about that!”

“I’m sorry, Robin,” he said again, turning to face her on the platform. The crowd rushed around them, uncaring of their little drama. “I promise it won’t happen again. But we can’t talk about it now, alright?”

She glared at him, not so much shorter that she had to lean back to look him square in the face. “Fine. But next time I want to talk about it, you bloody well better stand still.”

“Deal,” Cormoran said, and the smile creasing his face was so gentle and warm Robin felt as though she’d been knocked back. “Shall we be off, then?”

Cormoran began walking without Robin saying anything at all, and she grasped the strap of her bag and hurried after him. The crowd allowed him through, and she slipped into his wake.

Outside the station, under the sign welcoming them to Naucelle, there was a harried-looking young man in a suit jacket, holding a handwritten sign that read STRIKE in bold strokes. Cormoran went right up to him. 

“I’m Cormoran Strike, and this is my partner, Robin Ellacott,” he said to the man. 

“Oh, good,” the man said in an American accent. “The station said some trains were running late but my French isn’t good enough to know which ones, and I was worried I’d be waiting all day. Lemme get your bags into the trunk and we’ll go. Arty’s thrilled you’re coming,” he said over his shoulder as he popped the boot. “He’s been talking about it for a week straight.” The slightness of his shoulders belied his strength and he lifted the bags without any indication of effort.

“Anyway, I’m Jeremy, Jeremy McCaffrey, it’s nice to meet you both,” he said, coming back around and extending his hand. He had a good shake, firm with a dry palm. Robin liked him immediately. “Hop on in and we’ll be at the house in a few.”

Robin ceded the front seat to Cormoran, in deference of his height and leg, and they set off, Jeremy driving competently for an American, in Robin’s estimation. Her opinion of him rose slightly higher. He was chattering away to Cormoran, who was nodding and filing away all the information for later, she knew. She studied the two men from the backseat. Jeremy was more what she’d always assumed her type to be, cheerful and boyish, completely nonthreatening. He was tall but not overly so, muscled like a runner or maybe a footy player, all lean lines, and his dark brown hair bushed up at the top to add an inch or two. His jaw was almost too small for his face, and his nose was a touch too large, but his generous mouth smiled easily and his eyes were bright with intelligence.

“So, Robin, or should I call you Venetia? Arty’s briefed me on everything you sent over last night,” Jeremy said over his shoulder. “I’m going to be one of your point people, so let me know if you need anything, really, and I’ll get it for you. I’m also Art’s computer guy,” he said confidentially to Cormoran. “So I can create an electronic trail for you if you need one.”

Jeremy’s eagerness to be part of their plan was sweet. Robin felt suddenly very much older than him, though they looked close to the same age. Had this boy ever faced a man who planned to kill him? Did he know what it was like to feel as though death was a hairsbreadth from your neck? No, probably not. But she wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Jeremy chatted the length of the ride, which was only about ten minutes, before they turned off the main road and onto a one-lane road that twisted and turned almost excessively. It wasn’t until they broke out from under the trees that it dawned on Robin- it wasn’t a road, but a driveway. Jeremy brought them up in front of a gracious manor house built entirely of stone and parked right at the door.

“Well, here we are,” he said. “Art’s rented the whole thing out, so we’ve got the run of the place. I’ll have someone bring your bags to your suite, and Sasha will bring you to breakfast.”

The sweet-faced girl coming out the door was waving. “Hello, hello! You’re the detectives! Welcome!”

Cormoran, hauling himself out of the car by pulling on its frame, trying to release some of the tension that built every time he was driven by someone other than himself or Robin, glanced back at his partner with an eyebrow cocked. How many people already knew about them? This was hardly subtle.

“Hi,” the girl said breathlessly. “I’m Sasha, you must be Cormoran and Robin.” She looked between the two with delight. “I’m so glad you’re here! Come on, Arty’s been in an absolute tizzy waiting for you. I don’t know how Freya’s kept him calm, honestly. Right this way!”

She began walking back into the manor. Robin shrugged up at Cormoran and started following. Standing there in the driveway, looking up at the house, Cormoran felt the enormity of what they were about to do wash over him again. 

How could they possibly pull this off?

The slam of the car boot gave him a jolt.

“You’re gonna wanna get in there, unless you’re okay with Freya eating all the bacon,” Jeremy’s voice said behind him. “She does it every day. I don’t know how. You never see her reach for it, then poof! It’s gone.”

“Ah, right. Thanks for the lift, Jeremy,” Cormoran said. “Which way?”

“Go in and to the left, then follow the breakfast smell, that’s what I always do,” Jeremy said cheerfully. “See you ‘round!”

Cormoran took his advice, trying to work out the kinks of long travel as he walked. He’d been far too stationarity of late. The siren smell of bacon and eggs wafted in the air, and Cormoran followed it until he heard a familiar voice.

“It’s so nice to put faces to names,” Robin was saying as he came into the room. “Oh, here he is. Arty, Freya, my partner, Cormoran Strike.”

“I believe we spoke briefly on the phone!” said the man introduced as Arty. “You’re even more imposing in person than in pictures!” He came around the table, hand extended, and when Cormoran took it Arty clapped him on the shoulder. It was very hale-fellow-well-met, which was a departure from other French men Cormoran had met.

“And my lovely wife, Freya,” Arty said, turning to gesture to the gracious woman sitting in state at the table. She smiled and made a welcoming gesture. “Won’t you sit? We thought we could get to know one another over breakfast.”

“It smells delicious,” Robin said. “I’m perishing for some real bacon.”

Freya patted Robin’s hand. “Then bacon you shall have, my dear. Nothing like it, not for the body nor the soul.” 

Cormoran took the indicated chair across from Robin just as two men in matching sweaters came in bearing trays of food. They deposited them on the table, nodded at Arty, and left, all in silence.

“Wel!” Freya clapped her hands. “Dig in! The pair of you must be tired of all the nasty train food, by this point!”

Cormoran already had a generous helping of eggs and was going for the rasher of bacon. Robin, seeing his focus, took up the conversation once more. She managed to put away a respectable amount of food while maintaining a lively conversation with Freya and Arty, while Cormoran ate possibly an entire pound of absolutely perfect bacon and eggs. 

Leaning back, he sighed with satisfaction, causing Robin and Freya to exchange a look of feminine exasperation before bursting into giggles. Cormoran looked between them- one young and warmly blonde, the other in her early 50s and dark of hair, and felt that they were two sides of the same coin. He looked over at Arty, and they shared a look of masculine confusion. 

“All in all, I think breakfast was a success,” Robin said in their sitting room. Their sitting room, what a thought- they had a suite all to themselves, four rooms if you counted the washroom, which was full-sized and had a walk-in shower with rails built in. Cormoran’s mind was on how good a shower in it would feel, without the risk of slipping like usual.

“What?”

“Breakfast went well,” she enunciated slowly. “Arty’s pleased with us, and I think Freya was impressed with how much you managed to eat.”

Cormoran gave a snort of laughter. “She’s no slouch herself. I think she ate seven pieces of bacon alone.”

“At least,” Robin agreed. “I can see you’re itching for a shower, but don’t take too long. We’re supposed to meet Arty in an hour to plot out our approach toward Hjort.”

“Why do you always pronounce his name like that?” Cormoran asked, standing up. 

“...Because that’s how it’s pronounced, Cormoran,” she said mildly. “You can’t go calling him Huhjort to his face, he’ll get offended.”

“Maybe I want to offend him,” Cormoran called from his room. The palatial queen bed beckoned invitingly, but he just grabbed his toiletries and came back out. “Maybe that’s my goal.”

“Cormoran!”

“Yes, dear?” he asked sardonically. “Am I supposed to like the man who’s going to be seducing my beloved fiancee away from me?”

“No, but you’re not supposed to know about that!” Robin was hanging halfway off the arm of the lounge, her hair dangling down as she bent over backwards to look at him.

“In these rooms, I’ll call him whatever I bloody well please,” Cormoran retorted. “I’m going to shower now, so bugger off, would you, dear?”

Robin stuck her tongue out childishly. He laughed as he closed the door.

She sat back out, staring at the painting on the wall opposite. It was an unremarkable landscape, rolling hills and verdant green. Robin thought it might be of the valley they were currently in. 

“How are we supposed to talk about that kiss if you won’t sit still long enough to look me in the eye?” she asked the painting. “What am I supposed to do with you, Cormoran?”

Standing under the steaming hot spray, which beat down satisfyingly against his back, Cormoran was wondering the same thing. How was he to explain what had gripped him if he himself didn’t know? Robin’s face had been so open, so sweet, so trusting, so _close…._

“Bugger, fuck and shit,” he said, tilting his head back so the water ran through his hair. “I’m a fucking moron.”

Robin unpacked her clothing as a way to pass the time. Unfolding the lovely Parisian clothes, she felt as though she was shedding her old life, like Venetia was a beautiful new skin to slip into. She wanted to leave her old self back in London, all the arguments, the recriminations, the scars and the divorce. She wanted to be someone without baggage.

“You can stay, though,” she said to the Vashti box she uncovered at the bottom of her suitcase. “You I’ll keep.” She unfurled the smooth emerald fabric, now creased from its long stay in its box. Hanging the green dress up next to the rest of her clothes, Robin felt a sense of freedom. She would keep only the parts of herself she wished to keep. She was in charge of her own life, wasn’t she? This job was going to go well. She’d make sure of it.

Cormoran, coming out of the shower, was wishing he’d thought to bring his hated crutches. He wasn't used to bathrooms so big he needed them, but the slippery floor was treacherous with only one leg, and the towels were across the rooms in a basket by the sink. The shower itself was perfectly equipped for a man with one leg, but the rest…

He considered his options. He could call Robin for help, explain through the door what he needed. That was nixed immediately. He was naked and there was no way that would end in anything but tragedy. He could crawl across the room. Uncomfortable and possibly counterproductive to the shower, but doable. In the end, he strapped his leg on for the quick trip to the towels, and found a fluffy robe hanging from the door as well. 

He wrapped himself in it and rushed to his room. 

“Comoran? We’re meeting Arty in ten minutes!” Robin called from next door. The doors between their rooms were locked, and Cormoran planned for them to stay that way.

“Ready in a mo’!” he called back, frantically toweling himself dry and pulling out some clothes that weren’t too creased. He looked at the rest of his neatly folded clothing, now crushed by the extra he’d bought in Paris, and resolved to hang it all up as soon as he returned. 

“Ready?”

“Ready,” he called back, yanking a comb through his still-wet hair. Wet was the only time it was combable, the curls already trying to reassert themselves. He came out of his room clean, if still damp, and better dressed.

“Shall we, then?” Robin looked up at him with her trusting eyes, and Cormoran felt, once more, the wave of impending doom. What would he do for her? What wouldn’t he do for her?

“No time like the present,” he said, opening the door for her. “Lead the way.”

Robin swept out of their suite with certainty. Cormoran followed, wishing he had some of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. This chapter did NOT want to happen. You've all been absolutely wonderful, and I made it happen, just for you. 
> 
> I know I skimped on describing Arty and Freya; you'll get more about them, including physical descriptions, next chapter. I have facecasts for them, as well as Jeremy and Sasha, if anyone wants; I may make a post on my tumblr with a masterpost of OCs for your reference. There's going to be a lot of them, just like JK does every novel. (If you're wondering how Robin's pronouncing Hjort, it's like "heart." Cormoran's just a dick.)
> 
> I might come back to tinker with this chapter later. Also, if anyone else has requests for "outtakes," please let me know! I might save them up for when I've got a few days off, or after I finish this fic, if I ever finish it #jokes
> 
> Thank you all, you're wonderful. Come hang out with me @ lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com if you're so inclined! I'll happily talk about my plans for this fic, answer questions, whatever. Until next chapter then xx


	11. a moon and three stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meeting, a drink, a proposal of sorts.

Robin walked briskly behind the man who’d come to show them to where Arty and Freya were waiting. No one here knew she’d never done anything like this before. As long as Cormoran treated her with respect, in their eyes she was a professional. Not a secretary or an assistant, but his partner. 

She went first into the room, which was a large, comfortable space, full of cushy armchairs and two couches, a card table, a billiard table, a dartboard, and rows of bookshelves. There were five people assembled already, and one more slipped in behind Cormoran.

“Ah, good! Everyone’s here!” Arty said, leaving his billiard cue and walking around to greet them as though they hadn’t eaten together an hour ago. “We can begin!” He kissed her on both cheeks in the French manner, and extended a hand for Cormoran to shake. Corm looked relieved.

Robin looked around the room. One woman she didn’t recognize, but she’d met the rest.

“Well, alright then,” she said. “You all know I’m Robin, and this is Cormoran.” He bowed his head briefly, letting her take the lead. “In the interest of us knowing everything, could we just go around and say names and jobs?”

She suppressed her blush and tried to look as though she did this all the time. The other four people glanced at each other, and Jeremy went first.

“Well, you know my name’s Jeremy McCaffrey. I’m one of Arty’s PAs, I deal mostly with the tech stuff, as well as chauffeuring when necessary because I’m the best driver.”

Sasha made a face at him, and he made one back. Freya laughed from her seat in an armchair.

“I’m Sasha Griffiths, we met briefly,” she said, waving a hand. “I’m Welsh, if you’re trying to guess, no one here seems to be able to. I’m one of the PAs, but I handle most of Freya’s business more than Arty’s. She does all kinds of charity work and things, and her family’s estate back in England. So I’m your girl for connections.” She exchanged a fond look with Freya. 

“Pah, my wife must stop stealing my assistants, or I’ll have to hire new ones!” Arty exclaimed. “Sasha, you have betrayed me.”

“What can I say, Freya’s got better hours,” she said with a smile.

“Because you both stay up all night! What I did to be saddled with this nightbird, I do not know,” he said to Robin and Cormoran. 

The woman they hadn’t met met broke in. “I’m Hannah,” she said, “and I’m clearly American too, so Jeremy’s not the only one here. I’m Arty’s PA, the one who sticks around when the others get better job offers and leave.” She extended a hand, which Robin shook. Firm grip, and a lovely manicure. “Of course I know who you two are, he hasn’t shut up about you since he first called. If you need anything, just give me a shout. I’m more than happy to help in any way I can.”

“Thanks,” Robin said. “Right, then. We all know what the job is, here, but for our sake, why don’t I outline the case and you all can tell me if there’s anything we’re missing. Before we start anything, I’d like to make sure we’re working from the same information.”

She sat down at the card table, and Arty and his PAs came over as well. Arty began speaking rapidly, and Robin nodded. Cormoran found himself suddenly feeling at loose ends, here at the top of his own case.

But it wasn’t his own case, was it? It was their case, and in some ways it was Robin’s case entirely. She’d done most of the initial planning and information gathering, she’d accepted the job. 

Freya came over to his side. “Your girl seems like a real force of nature,” she said at his elbow. “I like that in a woman.”

“She is,” he replied, looking at the way Robin was tucking her hair back as she listened. “but she’s not- we’re not actually together. She’s not my girl.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed,” Freya said. “It’s just the way you two work together, you seem like a real couple. But of course, a good partnership is in many ways like a good marriage. My apologies.”

“No need,” he said, turning to look her in the eye. Her eyes were startlingly blue beneath her dark hair, and the crow’s feet and laugh lines were somehow graceful instead of sad. She seemed like a woman in her prime, though Cormoran knew she was over fifty.

“If you’re wondering, I am older than my husband,” she said, turning to look at the man in question. His head was thrown back with laughter, his brown throat a long line down to his dress shirt, where the first two buttons were undone. “It’s about a four or five year age gap, depending on whose birthday was most recent. People are often surprised that a man like him wouldn’t be with some young beauty, but he always says the years mean more than anything else.”

“Youth doesn’t have a monopoly on beauty,” Cormoran said, surprising himself. “He does have a beautiful wife.”

She smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “Oh, you flatterer! I do like a man who can see what’s in front of his eyes.” She tossed her head, not coquettishly but with humor.

“How long have you been together?” Cormoran asked.

“Fifteen years,” she said. “We met at some awful charity event, it went on forever, and I just couldn’t look away from him. He’s got such charisma, you know, and his looks aren’t half-bad either.”

Cormoran was studying Bartolome Dubosc, and had to agree. In his late forties, with deep lines carved into his face from laughter, he had richly brown skin and close-cropped curls. His mouth was generous and his hands gestured expansively. Cormoran could see why Freya would be captivated, because he was a man who was so clearly enamoured with life that he pulled others into his orbit to enjoy it with him. Cormoran had seen it himself during breakfast.

“And his PAs?” Cormoran asked, apropos of nothing. “What are they like?” His research hadn’t included them. One man and two women; unusual in Strike’s experience. Rich men either had beautiful women or brisk young men as PAs, not a group of assorted twenty-somethings, none of whom were conventionally attractive.

“They’re a good crop right now. He tends to pick them up like souvenirs when we travel,” Freya said. “He’s taken a shine to Americans ever since he found Hannah. She was his waitress in some terrible cocktail bar he had a meeting in. He says he started chatting with her for want of intelligent conversation, and realized she was smarter than the man he’d gone there to meet, and hired her on the spot.”

“And what, she just up and moved to France?” Cormoran raised his eyebrows, looking over Hannah in new light. She was tallish, slim, with asymmetrical features that made her interesting instead of conventionally beautiful. 

“She’s got three siblings, so she wasn’t worried about her parents, and she was working as a waitress to pay off her loans from university. She’d been a fool not to take the job, and she knew it.” Freya turned to the sidebar to pour herself a drink.

“Sasha, on the other hand, took the job only after Arty promised to help support her mum. Single mum, only child- they’re quite close. Arty helped her go back to school, and Sasha came right along for the ride.” Cormoran looked over Sasha, clearly the youngest of the bunch. Mixed race, unless he missed his guess, and he had a feeling the black parent was the mum. She was pretty but looked very young in his eyes.

Freya offered him a glass. “Bit early, isn’t it?” he said, accepting. It was, upon tasting, a truly exceptional scotch.

“It’s practically lunchtime,” Freya said, raising her own glass. “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you about Jeremy, that boy could talk the ears off an elephant. You were in the car with him for fifteen minutes, I’m sure he told you his life story.”

“He did, but he didn’t mention what Arty was doing at a fundraiser for Jewish athletes,” Cormoran said. This scotch was amazing. 

Freya laughed and took another sip. “Well, Arty’ll be the first to tell you he’s descended directly from slaves. He feels very strongly about helping disadvantaged groups all over the world, and especially about the Jewish peoples. We went to Poland about ten years ago, on a business trip, and toured many of the Holocaust sites while we were there. It’s- indescribable.” She took a deep pull from her glass, finishing it off. “It’s unspeakable, in many ways, what men will do when they’re following orders. The sheer inhumanity of it all. After that, he took an especial interest in helping Jewish causes. So,” she shrugged. “He helps fund a scholarship for Jewish athletes in America. He’s a man of many interests. Actually, Hannah is Jewish as well.”

“Ah,” Cormoran replied, unsure of what else to say. Speaking with Freya, he felt out of his depths. This woman had seen more of life than he had, in more ways than one. 

“Don’t let me talk your ear off,” she said, laughing a bit at his discomfort. “You ought to go listen in to what they’re talking about. I’m going to go see what’s for lunch, you can all fill me in later.”

Freya set her glass down on the sideboard and left the room, leaving a waft of perfume behind her, a crisp floral scent. Cormoran knew he should pull a seat at the card table, be part of the planning, but he sipped what was left of his drink, watching them speak. Arty and his PAs were firing questions at Robin rapid-fire, and she was handling them deftly, smiling and gesturing, and he wanted to watch her forever, there in her element. 

He’d been asking himself for the past few hours what the bloody hell possessed him on that last train, to kiss her like that. As she laughed and rolled her eyes at some comment Jeremy made, he knew. He knew, and he knew he couldn’t; he knew this was not the time, not the place, and perhaps it never would be, because Robin didn’t need him throwing feelings at her all of a sudden. She’d just gotten out of a long, toxic relationship, and fuck if he didn’t know what that was like; he tossed the last of the scotch down his throat in a sweet burn. She deserved someone who didn’t muck up every woman he touched. 

Ambling over to the table, Robin greeted him with a smile. It was as if he’d never kissed her; it was as if they were as they’d always been. 

“Good, I didn’t want to share our full plans until you got here. Jeremy was just telling me about Hjort’s place in the business, I can fill you in later, it’s not important now. Do you want to tell them the plan, or shall I?”

“Go ahead,” he said, inclining his head. “It’s your plan.”

She gifted him with a brilliant look of gratitude and turned to the table. 

“I’ve sent you the dossier with the basics of our identities, so if any of you are looking for more details, you can refer to that. I’ll be updating it as we go along; one of the key components of a scheme like this is flexibility. You have to be able to adapt as we go. None of us in this room knows exactly what it is that Hjort’s trying to do, so Strike and I will become the people we need to be to find out.”

Sasha leaned forward. “I haven’t seen the dossier yet.”

“I’ll forward it to you,” Jeremy said immediately.

“The basics,” Robin said, not wanting to leave Sasha out, “are that I’m Venetia Rose Ashworth, and he’s Eric Bunsen, my fiancee. We know Hjort usually goes for married couples, but part of the trick is to stick as close to the truth as possible, and it’s just easier for us to be engaged, rather than married.”

“How did you pick your names?” Arty asked. Cormoran looked at the older man, who looked as though he was soaking up every scrap of information like a sponge. What an odd question to ask.

“Oh, my middle name is Venetia, so I already feel attached to it, and Rose is a good, common middle name. Ashworth is the last name of a friend of mine from school.” Robin delivered this in a cool, off-handed manner, in an effort to dissuade this line of questioning. It wasn’t important.

“And you? Eric Bunsen?” Arty would not be dissuaded.

“Ah,” Cormoran said, drawn into the conversation at last. “My mum thought about naming me Eric, so it fits the age and place I’m from. And Bunsen is something an old friend of mine calls me, so I already respond to it. That’s one of the easiest tells of someone using a fake name, they don’t respond to it.”

Arty nodded, toying with the buttons on his shirt. Cormoran hoped they could get through this discussion without getting too far off topic. He was thinking about lunch.

“So what do you need from us?” Hannah cut right to the point. Cormoran turned a grateful look to her, which Robin saw and disliked. 

“We’ll need you to help build our cover, basically. Jeremy, you especially will be helpful, since online is one of the easiest ways to crack a cover. Arty can’t be our touchpoint for all questions, obviously, so we’ll be turning to you when we need things,” Robin said. 

“And should we call you by your real names?” Jeremy asked. “When we’re alone and all?”

“No, actually,” Cormoran said. “It’d be helpful to us if you could always call us by our cover names. If we start now, we can get used to them, and the last thing we want is for someone, in the heat of the moment, to let out the wrong name. Or just be overheard, really. Safer to stick to the cover story.”

“So then, Venetia, Eric,” Hannah said, checking her watch and rising, “if you need something from me, you have my number. Just shoot me a text. I have to go sit in on a shareholder meeting for Arty, so I’ll see you later.”

She strode off and out the doors.

“Robin- excuse me, Venetia, do you have a ring? Or will you need one provided? I had Freya bring some of the things from the safe, we have quite a selection for you, if you need,” Arty said. His excitement at the thought was obvious. 

“Actually,” Cormoran said, feeling a touch of heat rising up his neck, “that won’t be necessary.”

The four others at the table turned to him. Cormoran knew he’d have to do this now, or Arty would never drop it. 

“Jeremy, could you run to my room? It’s in a ring-box in the inside pocket of my suitcase on the bed,” he asked. 

Jeremy sprang up, tossing him a sloppy two-fingered salute. “Be right back!” He jogged out the door. They sat in silence for a moment, Robin shooting him a questioning look. 

There was an odd feeling in her stomach, not quite the champagne bubbles of the kiss, more like a rubber band was being twisted tighter and tighter. What ring had he brought for her? Where on earth would he have got it from? It wasn’t- she had a sick feeling at the thought it might have once belonged to Charlotte. But no, he said he’d never bought Charlotte a proper ring. So it couldn’t be that. 

Jeremy returned in a minute, holding a blue velvet box aloft. “Got it!” he said. “No problem.” He handed the box to Cormoran and plopped back into his chair with satisfaction.

“I meant to give this to you earlier, on the train,” Cormoran said, turning to Robin. In private, he meant. Without all these eager eyes on us.

Robin was looking at him with her eyes large in her face, glancing from the threadbare velvet in his hand to his face and back again. 

“I saw it in Paris,” he said quietly. It was meant for you, he wanted to say, but didn’t. He slid the box down the table to her.

She opened the lid, aware of how many people were watching her, and had to keep her face from betraying- what? The ring was perfect. A golden crescent moon cradled a single pearl, next to a cluster of three glittering diamonds like stars. She took it out of the box and slid it onto her left ring finger, where it slipped gently over her knuckles to sit in its proper place. 

She looked up from her hand to see Cormoran watching her with such a tender expression on his face she wanted to kiss him again. Or hit him. Anything to stop him from looking at her with such- looking at her like that.

She held up her hand. “I think I’m set, Arty, thanks,” she said, forcing herself to sound casual. Sasha held out a hand in a gesture Robin knew only too well, the global sign for “well, let me see the ring, then!” She extended her hand to be oohed and ahhed over.

“It’s lovely!” Sasha exclaimed. “You found it in Paris?”

“Yeah, during our stop between trains,” Cormoran said gruffly. He hadn’t thought that the sight of the ring on Robin’s finger would affect him so much, but it was just as he’d imagined it to be. The gold complimented her hair, and the diamonds flashed in the light. “It was in a shop of vintage jewelry. Man who sold it said it’s Victorian, from the 1890s or thereabouts.”

Arty gave over his inspection of Robin’s hand, and she sat back in her chair. “A good find, Strike. It suits her.” 

“Thanks,” Cormoran said. “It just jumped out at me. Glad it fits,” he said to Robin.

She was cradling her hand against her chest, having a sort of flashback to when Matthew had slid that sapphire onto her hand and sworn- but this was France, and Cormoran, and a pearl. Not the same at all. 

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and what she meant was, thank you for knowing I didn’t want another large flashy stone on this hand. Thank you for knowing I prefer gold over silver. Thank you for picking this ring for me.

“You’re welcome,” he said, as though he’d heard her. She thought, looking into his eyes, of their kiss, and her eyes flickered down to his lips without any conscious thought; his eyes widened, just a touch, and she looked away.

“Well!” Robin said, clapping her hands together and turning back to the table. “That’s sorted. Now, does anyone have questions about Venetia and Eric that haven’t been answered by the dossier?”

Sasha looked apprehensive, not wanting to betray her ignorance while desperate to know more, but was saved by the reappearance of Freya. 

“Lunch is ready! I hope neither of you is lactose intolerant, the chef’s made the most delectable-smelling grilled cheese with soup and it would be a shame to miss out.”

They all stood, Arty going over to wrap an arm around his wife’s waist and lead them back to the dining room. Robin hung back a touch, and Cormoran waited in the doorway for her.

“How did you-” she began to ask, holding up her hand. The diamonds winked at him. 

“I knew your size from the wedding,” he said quietly, and she knew what he meant. “And I just… when I saw it, it seemed like it was meant for you. I’m glad you like it.”

“Oh, it’s perfect,” she said, reflexively rubbing the pearl. “But Corm, we do have to- we have to talk about-”

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at her. He could easily step forward, duck his head, kiss her again. But he shouldn’t. “Let’s have lunch first, though.”

She gazed up at him, her mouth twisting up slightly.

“Alright,” she acquiesced. “After lunch.”

As they walked back to the dining room, Cormoran wondered if he’d have figured out what to say by the time they finished eating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made a page on my tumblr as a guide to this fic. Character's faceclaims and short bios will be available, as well as images of objects, fashion, and other relevant things. This story is getting bigger, and I don't want it to be too confusing. [Check it out here, where you can view the current faceclaims, as well as the ring Cormoran bought for Robin.](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/eyeswilltell) It's best viewed on a computer or tablet rather than a phone. ([Here's just the ring, if you're on mobile and can't wait.](https://78.media.tumblr.com/9e738b4a922983548398d0090bb2900c/tumblr_mg6b1wUvRB1qzi2nqo1_1280.jpg))
> 
> I hope you're all enjoying this! Please let me know if you ever have questions or ideas, I want to make sure you know what's going on. 
> 
> I'll be going to about an every-other-day posting schedule, I think. I hope to keep this coming as long as the muse will allow.


	12. parallel lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They talk, finally. Sort of.

Sitting down for lunch, Cormoran found himself sandwiched between Sasha and Jeremy, across from Freya. Arty had sat next to Robin and was discussing something rather animatedly; Robin nodded and sipped her wine.

“So, Cormoran, I was wondering-” Jeremy began. 

“We’re supposed to call them by their other names, you ninny,” Sasha said without looking at him.

“Damn, right, sorry,” Jeremy said. “Eric, have you worked a lot of cases like this? Where you’re undercover?”

“Some,” he replied, dipping his quarter of grilled cheese into the soup. It smelled delicious, despite the huge breakfast they’d shared not three hours ago. “Not so many in recent years, after I got enough publicity to be memorable.”

“The Lula Landry case!” Sasha exclaimed. “God, I followed that for ages. I loved Lula, she was one of the first women I saw who were famous and who looked like me, when she died I swear I cried like a baby. I can’t believe it was her brother!”

“Yeah,” Cormoran said, finishing the piece of sandwich. 

“What a moron, to hire a detective to solve a crime he committed,” Jeremy said.

“Mmm,” Cormoran said through another mouthful of bread and cheese and soup.

“Children! Let the man eat!” Freya said, laughing, as she set down her wineglass. “I know you have questions, but he’s never had Serge’s cooking and he’s clearly a man with a refined palate.”

“I know,” Sasha said, “but we can hardly ask him questions about this sort of stuff when he’s working, can we? It’d blow his cover!”

“Be that as it may, let the man eat,” Freya said. The two PAs subsided, and Cormoran shot Freya a look of thanks over his next bite. She smiled and raised her glass slightly to him.

Hannah came in late, looking a touch harried. “Sorry, guys, call ran long. Arty, you might want to sell some of that stock, the leadership’s gone to complete shit.” She slid into the seat across from Robin’s and grabbed for the grilled cheese.

Cormoran ate steadily while the conversation slowed around him. He knew he was acting out of sorts, but the food was incredible and the only person who knew him here didn’t seem to be paying any attention to him. The food simply kept appearing on the table until everyone stopped reaching for more, and Cormoran quietly excused himself to Freya. 

“I’ll be in my suite, I have some things I need to prepare for tomorrow.”

“I’m sure you do,” she replied. “And perhaps a nap to follow that scrumptious lunch is in order. I must admit, the Spanish are onto something with siestas. I may institute it as a rule while we’re here, just on principle.”

She turned to get Arty’s attention, and Cormoran made eye contact with Robin. He jerked his chin slightly; she gave him a brief nod.

He wandered for a few minutes before getting a feel for the layout of the house, and took a staircase he was reasonably sure led to the wing where he was staying. He emerged on the upper floor to find Robin coming down the hallway towards him. He had a momentary flashback to the awkwardness of adolescence, the way he was deeply aware of his hands and had no idea what to do with them.

“I’m just going to-” Robin said, breaking off awkwardly. 

“Yeah,” Cormoran said. I’ll talk to you, in, ah, a few minutes?”

“Sounds good,” Robin replied. Cormoran held open the door to their suite for her, and she ducked past him. “Freya was talking about instituting quiet hours after lunch each day, so we should be free for a while. Arty seemed pretty insistent on talking to both of us tonight, though. I told him after dinner would be fine.”

She turned to him at the door to her room. “That’s fine, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Sure.” He could only look at her. He knew they had to talk about what had happened that morning. What he’d done. 

“I’ll be out in a few,” Robin said suddenly, and slipped into her room.

“Yeah,” he said again, to her closed door.

Sitting on her bed, Robin tried to figure out what to say to him. Her anger had faded, but not cooled; what on earth was he playing at? He clearly didn’t- he couldn’t- it wasn’t right to kiss people when you’re not interested in them! When you have to fake a relationship, you have to trust the other person! She sat, and seethed, and felt the fury rush back, satisfyingly. If he knew how she- felt- then it was cruel, and if he didn’t, it was still wrong. Kissing him as Venetia, she could do, somehow. It was different then. But to kiss her, as Cormoran, as Robin, was mean. 

She built herself up to a proper temper, and realized it might not be necessary, but it was easier to be angry than anything else. Anything else might give away the fact that she was- was-

Ah, fuck, halfway to in love with him herself. But if she was, then Matthew would be right, and she refused to give him that satisfaction. So she was angry, angry, angry.

She could heard Cormoran out in the sitting room, tapping on his laptop. Suddenly even those things she’d found endearing, like the way he typed with two fingers, became fuel for her rage. Why didn’t he practice typing, instead of leaving it all for her! She was geared up for a proper row, and came out of her room with pink spots high on her cheeks.

Cormoran looked up from his seat on their sofa, a pained sort of frustration on his face. “Have you been able to get on the wifi?” he asked. “Jeremy left instructions, but I can’t seem to make it work.”

Robin felt herself deflate slightly. There was no reason to tear into him straightaway without knowing what he’d been thinking. 

“Here, let me,” she said, sitting beside him and sliding the laptop over to her own lap. They sat in silence, Robin staring at the screen, Cormoran staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” Cormoran said, turning his gaze to the landscape painting on the wall. 

“What?” Robin turned to look at him.

He focused on those green hills and forced himself to keep talking. “I shouldn’t’ve kissed you on the train. I’m sorry I did that.”

Robin felt a sinking in her chest and told herself that this was what she was expecting to hear and not to be so silly. 

“I don’t want this to be-” his voice cut off. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I don’t want this to ruin our partnership. You know how much you- how much our work means to me, Robin,” he said, turning now to look at her. “I don’t want to ruin that. I’m sorry.”

“Of course,” she forced herself to say in an even tone. “I don’t want this to come between us either. But Cormoran, you can’t- we have to know what the lines are. We have to have boundaries for this. It’s the only way-” _the only way to keep me from believing any of it is real, that perhaps you could feel something for me._

“I understand,” he said quickly. “Of course. I was out of line earlier. It was my mistake, it won’t happen again.”

“Alright then,” Robin said, feeling her towering anger fizzle into a pile of ash in her chest. He was sorry. He wouldn’t do it again. It was a mistake. There was no point in being angry; he hadn’t been leading her on, taking advantage of her. It was a mistake. It wouldn’t happen again.

Cormoran sat next to Robin, wishing he had to courage to say anything else. She looked wan, tense, and of course she did, her business partner had kissed her out of the blue and had waited hours to explain himself, she was probably wondering what was wrong with him. 

What he wanted to say was, “It won’t happen again, unless you want it to,” because he wasn’t in the habit of kissing women who weren’t interested, and there had been a moment, one sweet moment, where it had felt as though she was kissing him back- but he didn’t dare say it. She deserved more than he could offer, and she wouldn’t be interested in him, he wasn’t her type. 

The tension between them seemed to draw out, neither knowing how to break the silence. The inches between them seemed to Cormoran far too much and somehow far too little.

For her bedroom, Robin’s phone buzzed. Her head whipped round, and she set his laptop aside and moved quickly to get it, leaving Cormoran alone on the sofa.

“It’s Arty, he’s asking if we might be able to meet with him tomorrow, as he’s had something come up tonight and won’t be in for dinner,” she called. “Is that alright?”

“Yeah, o’course,” he called back, grateful that she had moved away. The temptation to reach for her, to set a hand on her arm or leg or god forbid her neck had been almost too much. He could still, if he closed his eyes, feel the way she’d fit so easily into his own body that morning; he could not allow himself to be so tempted, not when they weren’t on the job.

He could hear Robin tapping rapidly away on her phone, emailing Arty back. His mind, circling the issue of Robin like a kite on a string, tugged him towards a realization.

“Robin?” he called over the back of the sofa towards her room. Her head came back into view.

“Yeah?”

“Starting tomorrow, we have to start being Venetia and Eric all the time,” he said. 

Why? No, wait, of course, we have to get accustomed to it, and so do the rest of them,” she said, and he smiled just a touch at her quick mind.

“And we have to get physically comfortable being them,” Cormoran said. “You said that Venetia is rather touchy?”

“Touchy-feely,” Robin said. “She’s a hugger, basically. Gives me an excuse to get close to Hjort and anyone else I need to.”

“Sure,” Cormoran said, once more feeling a touch of anger at the as-yet unmet Hjort and his smarmy smile and the fact that Robin was going to get cozy with him at all. She’d need to be much cozier with him, or rather, with Eric, of course, which Cormoran tried not to feel satisfied about and failed rather spectacularly at.

Robin came back out into the sitting room, taking a plush chair that faced the couch. She had thought for a moment of resuming her seat on the sofa, but rejected it as too risky. 

Kissing her had been a mistake. Alright. Won’t let it happen again. Sure. No reason for her to make matters worse than they were. And how could they be worse? She, that is, Venetia, would need to kiss him, that is to say Eric, regularly, for nearly the next fortnight. 

“Listen, Robin, I know I said this on the train, but it bears repeating. When we’re in these rooms, when it’s just us, you never have to pretend. We’ll leave Eric and Venetia out in the rest of the house; in here, it’ll only ever be us, unless we discuss it,” Cormoran said intently, leaning forward. “I don’t want this to become more than a job. In here, we can always return to the real world.”

“Of course,” Robin said, drawing her knees up onto the chair. “That makes sense. It’s just a job.”

They nodded to each other, both feeling as though it was more than just a job, and neither knowing the other felt the same. If it had been a novel, they would reach for each other at the same time, in a moment of shared clarity, but sadly it was not a novel, and they began to speak of other things, planning what to say to the people they had met that day, what to ask for, with no idea that their minds were once more traveling parallel tracks.

The tragedy of parallel lines, you see, is that they never meet.

When they went down for dinner, they shook off identical melancholies, and turned on their own types of charm.

Robin sat with Jeremy and Hannah, and she followed their quick banter with interest. The looks she slid over to Cormoran went unnoticed. 

Cormoran chatted with Freya, who had a seemingly endless supply of gossip and advice about the people who would start arriving in three day’s time in preparation for the great party that she and Arty were throwing the following Saturday. He asked questions and laughed at her jokes and drank perhaps more of the truly lovely local cider than he’d intended. 

After dinner, Freya led them back to the billiards room they’d met in earlier, and persuaded Robin and Sasha to join her at cards while Cormoran accepted Jeremy’s challenge at billiards. There was a moment of confusion when Jeremy began playing pool, after which Cormoran, slightly inebriated, took it upon himself to teach Jeremy proper billiards. Hannah occasionally looked up from her tablet to heckle them both. 

Robin excused herself at barely ten o’clock.

“It’s so early, Robin dear!” Freya said, shuffling the deck. “Are you sure you won’t play one more round?”

“No, thank you, I think I’m done losing for the night,” Robin said with a smile. “And remember, starting first thing tomorrow I’m Venetia at all times.”

“Of course, of course. Sleep well, then!” Freya turned back to Sasha and began dealing the cards. Cormoran saw Robin leave the room, but thought it best to give her space. They’d spent too much time close together over the past few days. They both needed space. He sank a ball and sighed. 

As she walked back to the suite, Robin found herself twisting her new ring in an old gesture. She studied her hand, the new addition shining in the low light. She knew how Cormoran had known her size; she could remember tugging the sapphire off, along with the brand-new wedding band, throwing them at Matthew. “Maybe it’ll fit Sarah Shadwell,” she’d said in a frighteningly even tone. “Perhaps I should go ask her if she wears a seven as well.”

Of course he’d remembered. He remembered everything. The pearl, sitting in its golden star, embraced by its golden moon, shone reassuringly up at her. It was nothing like the one she’d worn for so long, marking her as Matthew’s. It was the ring that Cormoran had seen in a shop in Paris and bought for her. But no, that wasn't true. This was the ring Eric had bought for Venetia. That was it. This ring was Venetia's. 

She went straight through the sitting room to get her shower things. A long stint under hot water would clear her mind. She left the new ring sitting gently, alone, on the mahogany dresser.

Cormoran came back to the suite to the sound of Robin in the shower. He could hear her singing, quietly. He stood there, listening, for a minute, before quietly going into his room and closing the door. He went through his routine, changing, taking off his leg. He didn’t want to disturb Robin, any more than he already had. It had been a long day. So he simply went to bed, and if he fell asleep with a pillow tucked into the space in his arms where Robin had awoken that morning, well, no one would know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent the weekend binging Stranger Things and working far too many hours. I might get another chapter up tomorrow, but don't hold your breath; we've come to the point in the story where the characters just want to talk about their feelings and the plot just wants to happen, and it's hard to do both. I'll do my best for you!
> 
> As always, thank you all for your wonderful comments. I hope you continue to enjoy this story. Let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see happen in the future! I might well take it into account.


	13. in the morning we'll be our new selves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the night before the rest of the guests begin to arrive, and Robin needs to talk to Cormoran.

Robin felt as though she was at the still center of a whirlwind over the next few days. The others were constantly flitting in and out of rooms, running out to take calls and running into ask questions. She was supposed to be Venetia at all times, and after the first day, everyone seemed to catch the hang of it, except for her. 

Venetia’s voice, slightly higher and breathier, caught in Robin’s throat. Venetia’s wardrobe was all new, so it was a bit itchy, a bit tight, needed to be broken in. Venetia was a touchy-feely girl, reaching out to clasp hands or nudge shoulders or give hugs, which were well-received by everyone except the one person who mattered most.

She and Cormoran danced around each other. She’d see him sitting on the couch, and would go as Venetia to snuggle in next to Eric, but Cormoran would stand and walk away as she approached. She’d try to lean against him, and he’d gently stand her upright. Her frustrations mounted as she tried to be Venetia, but Eric didn’t seem to be there at all. Cormoran was responding fine to Eric and to Bunsen, but he didn’t seem to be responding properly to her at all. 

Cormoran found himself avoiding Robin, which was rather difficult, seeing as they shared a suite. He rose earlier, meeting her eyes at the breakfast table. He went to bed later, staying up discussing business and sport with Jeremy, who seemed to have developed a rapport with Eric. They had a billiards bet going, which Jeremy was losing badly at. He talked at length with Arty about the older man’s suspicions about Hjort, what his motivations could be, his background. 

He took long walks around the grounds, smoking cigarettes and saying very little at all, avoiding Robin’s eyes, her gentle hands, the way she slipped easily to fit against his side when they sat around the billiards room drinking and telling stories in the evenings. And somehow, the days passed, one after another, until it was Saturday night and the first guests for the week-long party were due to arrive the next day.

“So, Eric, Venetia, do you feel prepared for tomorrow?” Freya asked at dinner, ladling chicken and dumplings out for herself and Sasha. “I know Hjort doesn’t arrive until later, but your job starts in full tomorrow, seeing as how at least three of the others are arriving.”

“Oh, we’ll be fine,” Robin-as-Venetia said. “Won’t we, teddy dear?”

Cormoran finished taking a bite of chicken to avoiding having to answer. He’d grown inexplicably fond of the nickname Robin had laughingly bestowed upon him, and had yet to come to terms with the fact that it was Venetia’s nickname for Eric, not meant for Cormoran himself.

Arty laughed at Cormoran’s focused chewing. “They say a man’s heart is found through his stomach, and that’s true for you, monsieur! Always eating, eating, eating. No wonder you go for so many walks!”

Robin frowned at him, just slightly, as the conversation turned to the merger Hannah was overseeing. Cormoran thought distractedly that it sounded as though Arty was grooming Hannah to take over the business, not just oversee his correspondence. 

“What?” he asked quietly.

“You’ve been acting odd,” she said in a low voice that hardly carried. “I don’t-”

“Let’s talk later,” he said through gritted teeth. He did not fancy trying to explain why he was avoiding his fake fiancee who he had real feelings for, to the woman who was both fake fiancee and real partner. 

“Talk when? When do we talk?” Robin’s head was down, so he couldn’t see her expression, but he could imagine. It wasn’t his favorite expression.

“Later,” he said again, around a mouthful of dumpling.

“Swear to me you won’t run off again.” Robin bit down on a mouthful of salad with a crunch that managed to sound threatening. Christ, he had it bad for this woman.

“So sworn,” he replied, swallowing. “After drinks tonight.”

“Fine.” She took a sip of her wine and turned to begin chatting with Hannah brightly, back in her Venetia voice. Cormoran watched her, the smooth way she transitioned into a completely new person, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the way she leaned forward to emphasize a point.

“You’re staring,” Freya said in a quiet, laughing voice, hiding her mouth behind her glass. “I wouldn’t remark on a fiance watching his bride-to-be besottedly, only you’ve both said you’re not really together. Makes me wonder, I’ll tell you, though it does sell the bit.” She took a long drink of wine while Cormoran blinked and found no words coming to mind.

“Jeremy’s accused me of being a yenta,” Freya said meditatively. An argument sprang up down the table, with Hannah and Sasha taking on Arty with Jeremy and Robin watched like tennis spectators. No one was paying any attention to the soft conversation at their end of the table. 

“A what?” Cormoran pulled his eyes from Robin’s profile to look at Freya.

“A yenta. A busybody, a matchmaker. And it’s true.” She shrugged. “I assume you know Freya’s not my real name?”

“Ah, yeah,” he said. “It’s Florence, right?”

“Yes, and some of my oldest friends still call me Florrie. But in uni, I was taking a mythology class, and some of the girls claimed I looked like the textbook illustration of the goddess Freyja, the Norse goddess of things like love, fertility, beauty, gold, all those such wonderful things. And then it turned out I was rather good at setting them up on dates. So they called me Freya, and it simply stuck.”

Cormoran nodded, afraid he knew where this was going.

“So I’ll tell you, if you’re not in love with that girl right now, you’re lying to yourself, because it’s all over your face every time you look at her.”

He turned, mouth open. She laughed.

“You look like a slapped mackerel, honestly. Eric Bunsen, dear, you have it bad for your fiancee. It’s rather obvious to those of us who are looking for it. Thought you ought to know.”

Cormoran sat there, eyes turning back to Robin. In love with Robin? Well, he was certainly attracted to her, he’d be blind not to be, but in love? He knew he was having feelings, but they’d been transitory, certainly, useless and bothersome, but they would pass in time. She’d find someone else, someone who wasn’t absolute shite at relationships, and be happy. His feelings would fade.

Love? No, certainly not. Lust, sure, that’d been why he’d kissed her on the train, of course. Admiration? She was smart, sharp, had good instincts and knew enough to make his head spin sometimes, admiration was part of it. But love? Freya was wrong about that.

Wasn’t she?

Robin could feel Cormoran’s eyes on her throughout the evening, more often than usual. Playing her loving fiance, of course he looked at her a lot, but it had been almost perfunctory until now, as though he was reminding himself periodically to look at her with An Affectionate Expression on his face. These looks were measuring, at though he was sizing her up.

After a certain point, after her second glass of wine, she turned and met his eyes from her place on a loveseat. He was leaning against the wall by the billiard table while Jeremy lined up a shot, and she had a kind of blazing look on her face that stopped Cormoran cold. She simply looked at him, feeling as though there was a physical bond between them as he stepped past Jeremy towards her, just looking at her, and he came over and sat down on the loveseat and slipped his arm around her waist casually and laughed at whatever Sasha had just said and she felt burning, she felt frozen, she hadn’t expected him to come to her, and he squeezed her gently and she pasted a smile on and nodded and laughed as though she wasn’t sitting with the most confusing man in the universe there on a loveseat in France. 

Cormoran hadn’t been able to stay away from Robin’s hard, defiant eyes, that said to him that he was being a terrible fake fiance and possibly an even worse real partner. He’d been thinking so much about himself that he’d left her in the cold; she’d been carrying the burden of their relationship, real and fake, and he’d been going for long walks and smoking. Looking at her face, he had begun moving without conscious thought, to sit with her, to feel her tucked against his side, to let the smell of her hair waft up to him. Perhaps it was selfish. Perhaps he shouldn’t have, not before talking with her as he’d promised he would. But he couldn’t stop himself, and he didn’t want to.

Was he in love with Robin? Looking down at her as she and Sasha talked over each other, there was a sick, swooping feeling in his chest that told him Freya might have, maybe, been right. 

When the stately clock on the mantle chimed the hour, Robin yawned and excused herself, claimed she wanted to be refreshed and ready for the newcomers. She cocked an eyebrow at Cormoran before she left the room, as if to dare him to come with her.

“I’d better go too,” he said, once more unable to back down from her face. 

“Good night, then!” Sasha said cheerfully. Hannah waved over the top of the laptop she and Arty were hunched over. Freya only smiled knowingly. 

He followed Robin out the door, through the halls that had become familiar over the past few days. She walked quickly, quietly, her soft shoes making no sound on the carpeting. He watched the way her hair rippled down her back.

She went into their suite without looking over her shoulder to see if he was following her, sitting right down in her favorite armchair before turning to look at him.

“Sit, then,” she said shortly. “You said we’re only ever ourselves in these rooms, which would be great, except you haven’t been Cormoran or Eric the past few days, and I’m sick of it. I can’t do this by myself, Corm. I need you to meet me halfway. I know it’s awkward and maybe not fun for you, but that’s the job, and you have to do it too, dammit.”

He sat down heavily on the couch while she gave her impassioned speech. 

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, it hasn’t been fair of me to leave you to do all the work. My meetings with Arty aren’t the same as what you’ve been doing. I see how much you put into this, and I appreciate it, Robin, really.”

She looked faintly gratified, but still angry. “Thanks, then, but I’ve got to say, Venetia’s been wondering where her loving fiance is. You can’t just gaze at me from across the room or across the table or whatever, Corm, I need you to be with me on this.”

“I know,” he said again. He had nothing else to say, because she was right. He hadn’t been acting properly, and his only excuse was really “I’m afraid I’ve gone and caught feelings for you for real and it’s terrifying as hell,” which he could hardly say at this moment. Or possibly ever.

“It’s wonderful that you know, but we’ve kissed once, Corm, and it was- it was-” it was awful and lovely and confusing and on a train- “it was days ago, and you said we were supposed to be getting used to each other as Venetia and Eric over the past few days, but how can I do that if Eric won’t show up?”

Cormoran sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “That’s on me,” he said finally, into the silence, not able to look at Robin’s face. “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make it worse, and I have.”

Robin let some of the tension run from her body at his admission. “Well, it’s not ruined. No one but the people who already know us have seen us over the past few days. We can do better tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Cormoran said to the ceiling, thinking about having to kiss Robin again, or having to kiss Venetia as Eric, really, and how confusing this all was. “Remind me again, why we had to have all the fake names and such? Why couldn’t we just be ourselves?”

Robin laughed, a tired sound. “Arty wanted us undercover, and he’s paying the bills. He says he didn’t want to spook Hjort by having a pair of private detectives at the party, and Hjort’s hardly about to seduce a detective, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Cormoran said. “That makes sense. Alright.” He heaved a deep breath and sat back up. “Could you come here, please?”

“Why?” Robin was immediately suspicious.

“Just come here, Robin, would you please.”

She got up and sat at the very opposite end of the sofa. 

“I have to ask….” He looked uncomfortable. Perhaps having her come closer had been the wrong move. “Is there anything you absolutely don’t want me to do? As Eric, I mean? We haven’t talked about it, and we ought to.”

She knew what he meant, and didn’t know whether to be upset or thankful.

“The only thing I don’t like is people touching my neck,” she said finally. “The back is fine, but not the front. And don’t… sneak up behind me, please. Matthew used to do it, sometimes, to get a rise out of me. At parties, that sort of thing. He said it was cute how I jumped and swore.”

“What a prick,” Cormoran said. Who snuck up behind someone who’d survived a vicious attack? Especially in front of others? He hated Matthew a touch more, now.

“I thought… I don’t know, actually, how I let him do that,” Robin said, lost in her memories. “I don’t know why I didn’t make him stop. But please, don’t do that.”

“I won’t,” Cormoran promised immediately. “And no touching the front of your neck. I’ve got it.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For asking.”

“I don’t want to make this any harder for you than it already is,” Cormoran said. She was seized with fear- did he know that she felt- was he just being kind because he didn’t want to lead her on- what-

“It can’t be easy to pretend to be in love with me,” he went on, oblivious. “I mean, I’m a big hairy bloke with one leg and a temper. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable on top of all that.”

“Cormoran, no!” she said immediately. “It’s not… it’s not completely awful. Don’t think that.”

She was afraid she’d given too much away. He looked at her with shuttered hope in his eyes, hidden so well she couldn’t see it. 

“Not completely awful?” he asked. “Glad I rate so highly.” He grinned, trying to defuse the tension, trying to make her laugh. And she did.

“Corm! You know what I mean. If you can just show up, not leave me to be in love all by myself-” and now she really had given too much away, and hoped he wouldn’t hear the truth in her voice- “if Eric shows up for Venetia, we can do it.”

“Yeah,” Cormoran said, smiling at her with that tender melting expression that made her want to hit him or kiss him or maybe both. “We’ll pull this off.”

“Right,” she said. The scar on his lip was tugging her eyes, and she looked at him, knowing he’d seen her looking at his mouth, and his eyes flickered down to her lips, and she felt all the moisture in her mouth dry up at once. Would he? Did she dare? What if it was the wrong move? What if- what if-

Cormoran leaned back, away from the sweet temptation of Robin’s mouth. She was watching him with wide eyes, nervous about something, and he didn’t want to kiss her when she was so clearly scared he would. 

“Do you want first go at the shower?” he asked, seizing the first topic change that came to mind.

“Oh,” Robin said. She hoped she didn’t sound disappointed. “I was planning on showering in the morning, actually, if you want it.”

“Works for me,” he said, pulling himself up. “Then I’ll see you bright and early.”

“In the morning then, teddy dear,” she said in her Venetia voice, teasing, trying to let him know there was nothing to worry about, that they were all right.

“In the morning, then, kitten,” he replied, half a smile tugging at his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: more OCs! More plot! More pining! Folks, I've got it all. That'll be up Friday afternoon, probably, since I'm seeing Fall Out Boy on Thursday night (!!!!). A reminder that Hjort's name is pronounced "heart," if you're wondering. 
> 
> Thanks to every single person who's left kudos or comments. (Shoutout to Thisisme for the bit about Robin's neck, that may become a plot point later on....) You're all wonderful and I do this for you as much as myself. Every comment means the world. xxx


	14. arrivals: a trio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin seeks peace. Cormoran seeks knowledge, and also a nap. Three new characters arrive.

The morning had proceeded much as the ones preceding it, but there was an air of relaxation that was totally at odds with the knots slowly twisting themselves into Robin’s stomach. Arty, Freya and the PAs were now, finally, on “real vacation,” as Jeremy had said cheerfully over his eggs. 

“I mean, we’ll still be checking our emails and putting out fires and stuff,” he said. “But we’re not officially working for this whole week, and I really need a goddamn break.”

“Jeremy, language!” Freya said playfully.

“I’m not on the clock,” he bantered back.

“Let the boy live,” Arty said, sipping his coffee with the air of a man who’d never truly appreciate caffeine until that very moment. “I wish for quiet.”

“Honey, you were up half the night, I hope whatever your were doing is done now,” Freya admonished, sliding him a platter of pastries. “This is our work-free week.”

“The merger, mon dieu, what a disaster,” he sighed. “It must require my attention.”

Hannah lifted her head from its place propped on her hand to give him a firm look. “Arty, no. This is literally my job. It’s what you pay me for. Besides, I’m off for two weeks next month. I don’t mind working more this week.”

“Hannah, you’re an angel. Remind me to remind my husband to pay you more,” Freya said, beaming at the younger woman. 

Robin sat silently, picking at her crepes. Cormoran seemed utterly unconcerned, eating his way steadily and with great enjoyment through the various foods on offer. 

“I’m going to go to my room,” she said, pushing back from the table. “I’ll be taking care of a few things, but I’ll be back in time for lunch.”

“I hope so!” Freya said. She was the only true morning person of the bunch, it seemed. “Cait is arriving later this morning, I think you two will be great friends.”

“Of course.” Robin said, smiling politely. “I’ll see you then.”

She practically ran from the room, taking the route with practiced ease now, but turning at the last minute away from the hall leading to the suite. She instead paced up another flight of stairs, to the top floor, where she knew she’d be undisturbed.

There was a short hall, lined fully with windows, where herbs grew in lovely planters. The top floor got the most sun, so they grew lushly, and the smell of the plants, combined with the fresh air and sunlight, acted as a balm for Robin’s nerves. She sat on the bench which held the gardening tools, letting the sun fall over her face.

It hadn’t quite felt real until this morning. Despite everything that had happened, despite becoming Venetia Rose Ashworth in nearly every way that counted, it hadn’t felt real until the time came for it to be tested. The people she’d been with until now had known she wasn’t, truly, Venetia, and any slips, any gaffes, would be discarded in their minds. They knew her name was Robin, and that his name was Cormoran, and that Venetia and Eric weren’t true.

But the people arriving today? They wouldn’t know. They would accept Venetia and Eric at face value. She would have to convince perfect strangers that she was in love with Cormoran, or really Eric, but really Cormoran. And she didn’t know if she was worried that it would be difficult to convince them, or far too easy.

She had been sitting there in the comfortable silence for at least a half hour, trying to sort through her feelings, when she heard someone coming up the stairs. She wished she had a book or a tablet or something to look as though she wasn’t having a crisis here among the herbs.

It was Arty, in his usual dress shirt with the top buttons undone, his sleeves rolled up.

“Am I disturbing you?” he asked when he saw her. “I come here sometimes to think.”

“Oh, not at all,” she said, smiling into the lie. “I was only going over some things in my head.”

“This is a very peaceful space,” Arty said, closing his eyes and turning his face up to the sun. “Even on cloudy days. I spend many days within rooms and behind screens. It is good for the soul to see the sky.”

Robin nodded. With his face relaxed, he looked much younger than he had over the past few days. She hadn’t realized how much tension was in his face until it was lifted.

“Are you happy you took my job?” he asked, with his back to Robin, gazing out over the grounds of the estate. “I hope you are. I do not think I could do what you do.”

“Oh, most of it’s pretty boring, really,” she said, finding it easier to be honest when she didn’t have to look him in the eye. “We end up following a lot of people, making lots of phone calls, tracking records, that sort of thing. Lots of cheating spouses and such.”

“The pettiness of men’s hearts knows no bounds,” Arty said sagely. “Still, to spend so much time with the darker places of men’s minds, it is a skill I do not wish to acquire. Money, numbers, these things are honest. Numbers do not lie, not like men do. Have you seen the movie Pacific Rim?”

“Ah, no,” Robin said, startled by the hairpin turn the conversation seemed to have taken. 

“It’s great fun,” Arty said. “Perhaps I’ll screen it this week. Great robots fighting great monsters. And Idris Elba, a great actor. But what I was thinking was a line from the movie. A scientist says, ‘Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of god.’ And I believe this to be true. I make money, a lot of money, and I am not ashamed of this. Numbers are honest. And I try to do good things with my money. I try to help people.”

“Yes, Freya was telling me about it,” Robin said, trying to understand what was happening. He sounded as though he was trying to convince her of something, or perhaps he was trying to convince himself. “She told me about how you fund a great many charities and scholarships for underprivileged groups, it’s amazing work.”

“She handles much of that,” he said. “It’s her work, not mine. And it’s true, I do spend a lot of money on myself, on the people I care about. That’s hardly a crime.”

Robin, thinking of the shocking amount she’d casually paid for the clothing she was currently wearing, of the exorbitant payment he’d offered over the phone, hummed her agreement. 

“I do my best,” he said to the rosemary plants growing beneath his crossed arms. “I try. I earn my money honestly, and I try my best to spend it wisely and with… with… merde, what’s the word. With generousness?”

“Altruism?” Robin suggested.

“Oui, altruism, yes,” he said, turning to look at her at last. “I try. It is not my fault that I understand numbers in ways that others do not. I see clearly, and such is a gift from God, and I use it to help others as well as myself.”

“Yes, you do,” Robin reassured him. “I heard so many wonderful things about what you’ve done. You’re a very generous man.”

“Thank you, Venetia,” Arty said, turning back to the window. “You are very comforting.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, realizing now that she hadn’t been using her Venetia voice at all for this conversation. She had been herself, and Arty hadn’t even realized it. She had, somehow, become Venetia so completely that even her employer unthinkingly called her such. 

“I have to go,” she said. “I’ll see you at lunch, Arty.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, waving distractedly, still deep in thought. She didn’t think he realized he’d put his elbows in a pot of mint, but didn’t pause to tell him so. She simply got up and rushed back to the safety of her suite, where she would be Robin to the one person who knew her, really knew her, in this entire godforsaken country.

Cormoran was on his laptop, sitting with his legs up on the sofa, when Robin came through the door.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Nothing. I just need to-” she found she couldn’t look at him. “I’ll be right back.” She went into her bedroom and closed the door, flinging herself bonelessly onto the bed and laying with her face in her pillows. 

About twenty minutes later, there was a soft tap on the door.

“Robin? You alright?”

She lifted her head, hoping her eyes weren’t puffy. She hadn’t had a proper cry, but her face tended to get red and show every strong emotion when she was like this.

“Yeah! Yeah, ‘m fine, thanks.”

“Right then, well, if you want to come out I can show you some of the stuff I’ve found on Huhjort. There’s some things that don’t quite line up.”

“Sure! I’ll be there in a mo’.” She wished she had a cool towel to lay over her face. She didn’t want Cormoran to know that she’d been emotional, that she’d been weak. This was just part of the job.

“In these rooms, I’m Robin,” she said quietly to herself. “It’s fine. I’m Robin.”

When she reemerged, Cormoran was laying back on the sofa in a familiar pose, arms behind his head, feet up, eyes closed. She smiled at the familiarity of it; they could almost be back in the office.

“Tell me what you’ve got on Hjort that’s got you so worried.”

He cracked one eye open to peer up at her. “It might be nothing.”

She rolled her eyes as she folded herself into her favorite chair. “Corm, it might be nothing, but with you, it never is.”

“Alright,” he said, hauling himself into a sitting position. “This took some digging, but I did what you showed me with following a digital trail and I found out that he’s got a bunch of family in the same business as Arty.”

“Okay, and?” Robin knew there was more than that, but also knew he wouldn’t tell her everything unless she demanded it.

“Well, he hasn’t disclosed it to anyone. It’s not blood family, right, it’s his mother’s stepbrother, so it’s his uncle but none of the names are the same, because it’s his dad’s second wife’s son, so the names don’t match, and Huhjort never brings it up. But from what I can tell, at least a few of the clients who’ve left Arty’s company have moved to Huhjort’s uncle’s company.”

“You can’t keep calling him Huhjort, Corm, you’ll call him that to his face,” she admonished as she mulled it over. “So you think this goes beyond a power play, you think it’s corporate espionage?”

“Makes a long shot more sense than Huhjort just being into the wives of the clients, doesn’t it? I couldn’t see why he’d be driving clients away from his own company, because he’d be losing money. But if he’s in league with his uncle, he’s probably getting kickbacks for new clients.”

“That does make a lot of sense. Does it change our play?”

“Haven’t figured that out yet. I think we need to meet him first to get a real feel for this guy. He’s been with Arty’s company for almost eight years now, so if that’s what he’s doing, it's a long con. We can’t move too fast.”

“Okay,” Robin said. “Okay. We’ll just take it as it comes.”

“Yeah.” Cormoran was looking carefully at her. Her face seemed drawn and her skin was a bit shiny. Had she been crying? “Are you… alright?”

“What? Yeah, of course. Just a little,” Robin groped for a reason, not wanting to admit to any weakness on this job, “just a touch under the weather. Figures, the first sunny day and I’m not well.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” Cormoran said, slipping into his Eric voice. “As your loving fiance, I would move heaven and earth to ensure your comfort.”

“Thanks, teddy dear,” she replied as Venetia. She gave him a slightly pinched but honest smile.

The clock chimed eleven. 

“Aren’t the new guests supposed to be arriving about now?” Robin asked. “Think I’ll go down and meet them.”

“‘m gonna nap,” Cormoran said, shifting back to recline on the couch. “Didn’t sleep well last night. Wake me up for lunch?”

The smile Robin gave him this time was much softer, fonder. “God forbid you miss a single one of Serge’s meals.”

“The man’s a culinary genius,” Cormoran retorted, eyes closed. “Can’t blame me for enjoying it.”

“I’ll get you up for lunch,” she promised, leaving him to settle down into unconsciousness.

As she approached the front of the house, Robin could hear people’s voices talking excitedly. She paused for a moment, summoning up Venetia to settle over her like a coat. 

At first glance, there was a bewildering number of people in the front hall. Robin realized it was because there were servants bustling in with luggage, around the eight people alternately hugging and shaking hands, and no one could move for fear of tripping over someone else. 

Sasha saw her standing there and called her over. 

“Venetia! Come meet Cait!”

Robin came forward, hand extended, to be met with a tight hug. “Hello! I’ve heard so much about you already.” Robin patted the woman’s back and was released.

“I’m Caitlin Ishii, but please call me Cait. I’m one of Arty’s former PAs,” the woman said in an American accent, smiling. In her early 30s, if Robin was any judge, she was at least partly East Asian and had a face meant for smiling. 

“I’m Venetia Rose Ashworth, properly, but you can call me whatever you like,” Robin replied, cheerful and breathy. “I’m rather jealous of anyone with an easy nickname, Venetia’s not good for much.”

Cait laughed, tilting her head back. “I like you! I knew I would! Darling, come meet Venetia Rose,” she called over her shoulder. A slightly younger woman with a strong jawline and a short fall of blonde hair came obediently over to them.

“This is my girlfriend, Annie,” she said proudly.

“Annette Benoit-Chandry, at your service,” the woman said. Robin shook hands with her.

“I was just saying I’m jealous of easy nicknames, and here there’s two of you,” Robin said, smiling widely. Cait had looped an arm around Annie’s waist in a comfortably possessive gesture, and Robin was charmed by how unafraid they were of judgement. 

“Oh, our third’s in your boat,” Annie said. “Merritt, come meet Venetia!”

A man with messy brown hair and soft, scruffy facial hair peeled away from Jeremy to come over, and Robin shook his hand as well. 

“This is Merritt Prokopios, he’s our third,” Cait said, fearlessly. Robin blinked, understood what was happening, and decided immediately that Venetia would be as charmed by this as by the two women.

“Delighted,” she said. “What do you do?”

“I play saxophone,” he said, gesturing to a large, dark case being brought in. “I tour a lot these days.”

They were interrupted by Freya, who began shooing them into the house. 

“You can all chat over lunch, let’s get out of the foyer, shall we?”

Sasha began hauling Cait’s hand towards the billiard room. “You have to tell me everything you’ve been up to! I’ve been dying to hear about L.A., is it everything you dreamed?”

Cait went along, laughing, and Robin followed behind with Annie and Merritt. “So Annie, Merritt’s a musician, what do you do?”

“Oh,” Annie said, a vibrant red climbing from her ears to her cheeks. “I have a degree in botany.”

“That sounds lovely! I love plants!” Robin smiled at her. On her other side, Merritt laughed.

“That’s not what you do, babe. She’s a dog groomer,” he said conspiratorially to Robin. “She works with lots of big-name stars.”

“A dog groomer?” Annie’s face was suffused now. “That’s fascinating! How does one become a celebrity dog groomer?”

“I’m not a celebrity dog groomer, that’s someone who’s famous who grooms dogs. I’m just a regular groomer who happens to work with the dogs of rich and famous people,” Annie protested.

“That’s how we met,” Merritt said fondly. “She works with Kyler Doss’s dog, Dragon.”

“Kyler Doss named his dog Dragon?”

“Even for a rapper, he’s kind of weird. I tour with him,” Merritt said cheerfully. “Is that ham I smell?”

“Probably,” Robin replied. These three were already overwhelming her, and it was only the beginning of the week. She wished Cormoran were with her.

Arty swept over to kiss Annie on the cheeks. 

“Annie! So good to see you! And is this the new one you’ve talked about?”

She slipped away from the introductions, back up to the suite. She’d need to warm Cormoran about the trio before he met them, and she perhaps needed more time to gather herself than she’d thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter later! The new characters are up on the character page on my blog, I'll link to that again later.
> 
> I meant to have the chapter up earlier, but my car broke down and I had to deal with that instead. Thank you to everyone who's left suggestions for this fic to go, they're wonderful and I love them and I love you. There's much more to come!


	15. in the evening we'll be our true selves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin and Cormoran are convincing. The sun sets.

She’d been both wrong and right. It was easier to be Venetia with Cormoran there as her Eric. It was infinitely more difficult to walk the fine line between being convincingly in love with him, and not convincing him she was in love with him.

Dinner that first night with the trio went well, and when Cait demanded to see the ring and hear about their engagement, Robin found herself gushing about how he’d waited and waited, but then he’d done it at sunrise and how it was just sooo romantic, and wasn’t the ring just beautiful, it’s an antique you know! And they ate it up with a spoon, telling her how sweet a couple they were.

Robin noticed Cormoran watching her more, not calculating anymore but with that open adoration that she couldn’t read. It couldn’t possibly be real, but it felt so real that she didn’t know how to handle it. It was almost like the way he’d looked at her the day he’d given her a letter and kissed her hand. But that wasn’t the same thing, either, of course.

That night, standing on the balcony while Annie and Merritt passed a spliff between them and Cait chatted about her job working with venture capitalists, the sun setting behind the mountain and the breeze playing with her hair, Robin found herself looking for Cormoran and not finding him for the first time in hours.

“Where’d Eric go?” she asked. “I thought I’d nab his coat, it’s getting chilly. Should’ve brought a cardi out with me.”

Merritt leaned his head back, letting a long stream of smoke plume out in the wind. “I think he and Jerr went in to get us all some drinks.”

“Ooh, drinks! Yes!” Hannah chimed. “After the day I’ve had, I think I deserve a tall glass.”

Robin nodded, feeling out of place with these fascinating Americans and their weed and their loose, easy confidence. The patio door swung open, and there was the outline of Cormoran’s familiar shoulders. It wasn’t hard for Robin to light up her face, open her arms welcomingly. 

“There you are, teds! It’s cold and I’ve missed you!”

“Hi there, kitten. Just went in to fetch us some libations,” he said, dropping a kiss on her head. He was carrying a tray of assorted mugs, which he set gently on the table. Jeremy came out behind him, followed by one of the staff, who had a tray with two large, steaming pitchers that smelled deliciously of autumn.

“Hot cider, with cinnamon and nutmeg and all good things,” Jeremy said expansively, waving an arm. “Blue pitcher’s made with hard cider, green pitcher’s alcohol free. Cider’s made down in the valley, the locals are super proud of it.”

“Here you go, pet,” Cormoran said, sliding Robin a mug he’d poured from the green pitcher. She smiled up at him when she saw her mug had a pattern of cats on it. He poured himself a large mug from the blue pitcher and sat down beside her, tugging her closer to wind an arm around her waist. She snuggled in to steal his body heat, thinking it shouldn’t be so easy to be this close to him and afraid to think too hard about what they were doing. 

“So, I get the feeling you blokes don’t follow the footy,” Cormoran said easily. The others were settling in around the table, sipping their ciders. Merritt had handed the spliff off to Jeremy, who stood at the balcony, puffing industriously.

Sasha was the first to reply. “This’s entirely the wrong crowd for a good footy conversation. They’ll chat about basketball long enough to make your ears fall off, though. Wait til Flannery gets here, he can chat about the league all day.”

“‘S long as he doesn’t pull for Man U,” Cormoran said agreeably, waving away the proffered spliff. “No thinks, work does tests. Stick to my cigs.”

“Ouch, that’s rough,” Jeremy said. “Arty’s more the type to join you for a smoke than test you.”

“That’s nothing on Merritt’s boss,” Cait said. “He smoked a lot, didn’t he, Merr?”

“Yeah, practically required as part of the tour,” Merritt agreed. He’d laced his fingers tightly around his mug, leaching the heat into his long, thin hands. “That’s what happens with the rappers when they go big, though. Drugs come easy when you’re Kyler Doss. Spoiled me for the cheap stuff, I’ll tell you.”

“This isn’t the cheap stuff,” Annie said, taking a long suck of it. 

“Of course not! None of us need to stick to the cheap stuff, not on these salaries,” Jeremy said. Cormoran and and Robin shared a look that clearly said no matter what they were pretending, they were far more accustomed to “the cheap stuff” than otherwise. She cuddled a bit closer to him, tucking her head to fit into the dip of his shoulder. He opened his jacket so she could get closer to him, and she sighed at the increase in warmth.

“Are they two always this nauseatingly cute?” Cait asked, grinning. Robin felt a blush rise and let it.

“Yeah, it’s kind of a lot, but you know. Young love and all that,” Sasha said, also grinning. Robin stuck out her tongue.

“You know I’m probably ten years older than you?” Cormoran asked. “You’re what, twenty-two?”

“Twenty-three,” Sasha said.

“Yeah, over ten years. Respect your elders, little one,” he said, free hand digging in his coat pocket. 

“There are no grownups here, only Zuul,” Cait intoned. “Lighten up, Eric, we’re on vacation!”

“I am light,” he said in a mild tone. “This is me being light.” He flicked on his lighter to touch to the cigarette he’d pulled out and set in his mouth. Hannah was the first to catch his pun.

“Being light!” she cried out. “Being _light_! With his lighter!” And her laughter set off the rest, so that they were a table of hacking, cackling young people, drinking cider beneath a clear October sky.

Cormoran was so intensely aware of every moment on that patio. The way Robin felt pressed against his side, the way she’d nuzzled close to his chest, just seeking warmth, he told himself, just selling the bit. The way one of her hands came up to pat his face, scratch softly at his beard, while the others laughed at his pun. And honestly, him? Making puns? Being Eric was making him into someone else entirely, it seemed. 

The feeling of Robin’s fingers gently playing with his beard made his heart stop and start again, stuttering in his chest. He took a long drag from his cigarette to disguise the fact that he wasn’t accustomed to this. 

He’d been trying so hard to meet Robin halfway. His own fears and doubts about this job aside, Robin had committed herself to this, to Venetia, and it was the least he could do for her to be Eric. But it might, in fact, kill him. To be this close, to hold her and smile at her and call her his, and to know that the moment they stepped into their suite, it all dissolved. It wasn’t real. He exhaled a plume of smoke, flexed his hand when it lay on Robin’s waist. None of this was real.

“So Eric,” Cait asked, lounging comfortably over her girlfriend’s shoulder. “What do you do for a living?”

“Oh,” he said, “I work at my dad’s friend’s construction company. I’m an overseer, but I’m between projects right now.”

“That’s cool. What kind of buildings do you work on?”

“Oh, flats, mostly. High-rise apartment buildings.” 

“Mmm. Do you like it?”

“Well, I like it well enough, and it keeps her in French clothing, so.” He shrugged, and Robin batted his chest playfully.

“You say that like my whole wardrobe’s French couture!”

“Kitten, it’s all just fabric to me,” he said, taking another drag of his cigarette. 

“Men,” she said, rolling her eyes. The other women at the table laughed, Hannah raising her glass in solidarity.

“Bless the rest of you for dating them, because I sure as hell couldn’t,” she said, clearly feeling the effect of the warm hard cider.

“Well, men do have some benefits,” Annie said, waggling her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner. The others laughed.

“Benefits like warmth. How are the rest of you not frozen though?” Robin asked. “If I didn’t have my teds, I’d be inside by now!”

The sun had sunk low on the horizon, and the light was nearly gone.

“Shall we adjourn inside?” Jeremy asked. “Eric, we’ve got a score to settle.”

“You mean I’ve got a title to defend,” he replied comfortably as he rose. “Well then, come on, kitten, up you get.”

“You mean I’m going to lose you to the billiard table again?” She pouted up at him from the bench. He extended a hand, gesturing her up. She took it, the delay letting the others get inside ahead of them.

“I think I’m going to go to bed early,” she said to him on the now-empty patio. “I need to wash the smoke out of my hair.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to leave your hair alone in the future.”

“No, no, it’s fine. It sells it,” she said, glancing over his shoulder to the setting sun, which was sending up its last rays in spectacular fashion. “How’s your leg?”

They hadn’t decided whether or not to tell anyone else about his leg. They hadn’t even told the PAs about it. It wasn’t obvious, and the fairly sedentary days made it easy enough to hide. He made sure to keep up with his regiment of creams and such, and the new pad he’d bought with Arty’s card had done wonders for his ability to walk distances. 

“It’s fine,” he said. “Hardly getting its usual beating on a job.”

“Good,” she replied. “Well, I suppose I’ll go in and say my goodnights.”

“Sure. Robin?”

“Mm?” She turned back to him, hair glinting in the last streaky sunset glow.

“You’re doing great,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say. He wanted to say something else, something meaningful, but it wasn’t the moment. Would it ever be the moment? He supposed he’d know it when it came.

“Thanks,” she said, arms hugging her stomach to keep herself warm.

“Let me get the door for you, kitten,” he said, taking refuge in Eric, in the simpler dynamic of their personas.

“Thanks, teddy dear,” she said in her regular voice. He could see her twisting the ring he’d given her around with her thumb, and in a sudden urge reached out to take her left hand in his, bringing it to his mouth to gently kiss its back.

“I-” she started to say, looking at him over her shoulder. He stared at her face, so familiar here in an unfamiliar place, the pinkness of her cheeks, the softness of her lips. He could, if he wished, lean forward, catch them with his own. He could. Her eyes were drawn to his own mouth.

“There you two are! At it again with the lovebird-ness, I see,” Annie said, coming back towards the patio. “I’ve been sent back for what’s left of the drinks, if one of you will help me carry them.”

“Yeah, sure,” Cormoran said, his eyes catching back on Robin’s face. He could hardly read her, now. “Venetia’s just going back to our suite, though. Been a long day.”

“Tell me about it! The jet lag is gonna catch up to us eventually,” Annie called cheerfully. “Good night, Venetia Rose. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Venetia Rose,” Cormoran echoed softly. He leaned forward, letting his lips slide along her cheek until they rested just at the corner of her mouth. She turned her head towards him, pressing their lips together more fully, before pulling away.

“Good night, Eric,” she said quietly, not looking at him. She began walking down the hall, the opposite direction of the billiards room. 

“Can you take this one?” Annie asked, coming back through the door. “It’s heavier.”

“Sure,” he said, taking the green pitcher with easy hands. He led the way back to the billiard room, mind stuck on the way Robin’s head had turned, as if with surprise. It had been surprise, he was sure of it. Or else it had been the knowledge of Annie so close by, perhaps watching. Of course it had been. 

He felt like a teen-ager again, and tried to focus as he and Jeremy shot billiards. There’d been no sign of Arty or Freya that night, which was odd. Hannah and Cait were in deep conversation over a bottle of schnapps. Annie and Merritt were trying to teach Sasha some sort of incomprehensible American card game that involved slapping each other’s cards, hands, and the table, and laughing constantly. There was too much happening. 

He won, but by a narrow margin, and Jeremy said with a bit of swagger, “Watch out, old man, I’m coming for that title.”

“Bugger off, kid, it’s mine,” Cormoran said. His mind was running in circles and his leg had, abruptly, begun to ache from all the odd angles he’d been shooting at. “Think I’ll make for bed,” he said.

“Join your girl?” Jeremy said. “If I had a fiancee that pretty, I’d be in bed too.” Cormoran blinked at the younger man. Had he forgotten who Cormoran and Robin really were? Surely not. It was only the alcohol and marijuana, muddling his senses.

“Yeah,” he said. “And watch your mouth about her.”

“Hey, I just called her pretty,” Jeremy laughed. 

“Right. I’m for bed, then. Night, all,” Cormoran called to the rest of the room. The clock on the mantle chimed the hour.

“We’d better get to bed too,” Cair said, clambering up from the couch. “Jet lag’s a bitch, I know it feels like the middle of the afternoon to us but we’ve gotta start adjusting or we’ll all be wrecks by Monday. C’mon, you two.”

Cormoran left while Cait was still hauling her younger partners out of the room. He hoped Robin had already gone to bed. He didn’t want to have to talk about the kiss, or anything else. He just wanted a proper bottle of Doom Bar, which he could not have, and a proper kiss, which he also could not have, and it was making him antsy. Maybe he'd smoke another cig out his window before bed.

He could hear the shower running when he came in. “It’s me,” he called to the closed bathroom door, but received no indication whether or not she’d heard him. 

Cormoran changed for bed, taking care of everything but leaving the prosthetic on. He’d wait until he’d brushed his teeth to deal with it. With things squared away, he settled down on what had become “his” sofa to wait for Robin to reemerge. 

When the water finally shut off and she came out, she made an utterly undignified noise at the sight of Cormoran lounging comfortably in his sweat pants and tee shirt.

“Sorry, didn’t hear you come in,” she said, catching her breath. she pulled the towel tighter around her body, quickly sidling towards her room. “See you in the morning, Corm.”

“Yeah, see you,” Cormoran said, not looking at Robin as the door swung shut behind her. In a twisted way, he was excited for fucking Huhjort for finally show up. That at least would give him something else to think about than Robin, sweet and soft and calling him hers.

The next morning, Cormoran awoke to an empty suite and two more people at the breakfast table. The dining room, which had seemed so oversized when he first arrived, was suddenly making a great deal more sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't expect a new chapter so quickly? Neither did I! The new characters will be up on the faceclaims page before the next chapter is posted.
> 
> Onward!


	16. breakfast and eavesdropping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some more arrivals. Robin eavesdrops. Cormoran kisses her hand.

The two newcomers, a married couple who looked around Arty’s age, chatted with Freya and ignored the younger contingent, who were gathered further down the table.

Cormoran walked over to the empty chair next to Robin, who gave him a bright, false smile. 

“Good morning!” Robin said cheerily. “I saved you eggs and bacon!”

“Thanks, kitten,” he said, dropping a kiss on her head as an excuse to smell her hair. “I’ll just grab coffee.”

As he was making his way steadily through the food, paying very little attention to what Robin was chatting about, Jeremy came in and sat down on his other side.

“Morning,” the younger man yawned.

“Morning,” Cormoran said around a mouthful of hash. After the previous night, he wasn’t feeling as warmly toward Jeremy as perhaps he had previously.

“Listen,” Jeremy said, leaning in closer. Cormoran could tell he hadn’t showered since the night before. “I’m sorry if I was out of line last night. Whatever that stuff Merritt brought was way stronger than I’m used to, and Sasha ripped me a new one last night when I got out of hand. I don’t remember it all too, well, but I wanted to apologize, just in case. Sometimes weed hits me the wrong way.”

Cormoran gazed at him levelly. Jeremy was pushing his mess of curls back with one hand, looking paler than usual. 

“You weren’t that bad,” he said eventually. “Just don’t talk about my lady like that again, and we’ll be fine.”

“Fuck, was I rude to Ro- Venetia?” Jeremy looked horrified. Cormoran’s suspicion that Jeremy was harboring a bit of a crush on Robin was solidified. 

“Not to her face,” Cormoran said, letting Jeremy twist himself up a bit. It might be mean, but he wasn’t feeling overly charitable this morning. 

“Fuck,” Jeremy said, burying his face in his hands for a moment. “I think I need coffee. No, I know I need coffee.” He looked up at Cormoran, a hang-dog expression. “If I ever look like I’m gonna smoke weed that Merritt brought, do me a favor? Just punch me. In the face. That stuff messed me up.”

Cormoran concealed him smile with a bite of bacon as Jeremy got up to get coffee. Robin leaned over on his other side.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing,” he said quietly back. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Mm,” she said, giving him a glance before turning back to Annie, who was waxing poetic about a dog she’d groomed and fallen in love with.

As he was finishing up with his meal, some of the matching-sweatered staff members came out with new platters of food. Cormoran was baffled by this, until he heard a hubbub in the corridor and in came two more people, clearly just arrived, greeted with open arms by Freya and Arty. 

“Come on,” Hannah whispered to the group of them, “let’s slip out while they’re distracted by Camellia and Rhys, and meet up in the library. They’re going to do nothing but talk politics and I’m supposed to be on vacation.”

As the others quietly gathered themselves to leave, Cormoran felt very much older than the rest. He’d rather talk politics with the frankly fascinating looking group at the head of the table than listen to more marijuana-addled twentysomethings play cards and tell stories. 

“You don’t want to go with them,” Robin whispered, a statement rather than a question. “Shall I make your excuses? Won’t do you harm to seem uptight and boring, I shouldn’t think.”

He gave her a look of gratitude. She grinned.

“I’d be a poor partner if I couldn’t tell that you didn’t want to go. I’ll go, might as well cultivate my pretty-and-harmless persona some more. No way to know which group Hjort will fall into, we ought to have one foot in both.”

Cormoran could kiss her for being so quick, so brilliant. And, he realized suddenly, he could. So he did, reaching out to snag her hand as she rose and pull her into him. Off-balance, she fell into his lap, her arms coming up to his shoulders to steady herself. They were now looking right into each other’s faces, and he glanced quickly at her mouth to telegraph his intentions.

Before she could make any gesture back, he’d slipped a hand around to the back of her neck, pulling her in to slide his lips fully against hers, slightly open, slightly demanding. And she gave right back, chin tilting up, hands clutching his shoulders tighter, letting out a little sigh that made him want to dive into her mouth and never come out.

At the head of the table, an unfamiliar voice coughed. Robin pulled back, the hand on the back of her neck keeping her from going too far, cheeks flushing bright pink. Cormoran could hardly take his eyes off of her.

“Sorry,” she said, turning slightly, not altogether apologetic. “Was just saying goodbye.”

Freya’s laugh rang sweetly. “For how long, Venetia darling, a week? You’ll see him by lunch at the latest!”

One of the newcomers, a slender woman with a cloud of black hair worn naturally around her clever face, looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be scandalized or delighted. Robin smiled at her, knowing she was flushed and out of breath, and the woman smiled back, and winked. Robin flushed brighter. The man next to her laughed.

“I’ll see you later, then, teddy dear,” Robin said to Cormoran, who had yet to relinquish his hold on her. 

“Right,” he said, letting go of her neck, her wrist. She pushed herself up off of his lap, and Cormoran wished immediately she could stay there, and hard on the heels of that thought was the knowledge that he absolutely had to get ahold of his feelings, or he was going to muck up their whole partnership in quick order.

Robin laid a quick peck on his head. He reached out to take her hand again, and kissed her knuckles. “Have fun, kitten,” he rasped out. She blinked at him before turning to heading out the door.

Cormoran turned to the six others still sitting at the table. Freya was looking at him knowingly and he felt very exposed. Arty, seemingly unphased by the behavior of his- guests? employees?- began making introductions.

“This is Eric Bunsen, the nephew of a friend of mine. Bunsen, this is Camellia and Rhys DeWinter, both old friends of mine, and Victoria and Louis Kirkham. Victoria went to school with Freya.”

The woman introduced as Victoria laughed. “I knew her when she was Florrie and I’ll call her that til we’re both six feet under, you beast. Vicky Kirkham, pleasure to meet you.”

Cormoran stood and came around the table to shake her hand. She twinkled up at him, and Cormoran could see why she and Freya were friends. “Named for a queen, then?”

She laughed and took back her hand. “Charmer, aren’t you? Of course I was, my da was a patriot to the end.”

The man sitting beside her, Louis, leaned around to extend a hand for a brief, firm shake. “Do sit, please.”

“Thanks,” Cormoran said, pulling out a chair. “Pleasure to meet you all,” he said to the group.

“So who was that charming young lady?” Vicky asked, exchanging glances with Freya.

“My fiancee,” he said. “Venetia.”

“There’s a name,” Camellia said. The thin Black woman was the one who’d winked. She was drinking her tea with every evidence of enjoyment. 

“Yeah,” Cormoran replied. “She escaped with the rest when they warned her it was likely to be all politics around here.”

The man next to Camellia, Rhys, guffawed. His skin shone dark and rich in the warm lighting, and his eyes were kind. Cormoran liked the look of him.

“Ah, flighty youth,” he said. “How old are you, then?”

“Thirty six,” Cormoran replied, wishing he’d brought his coffee down the table with him. “She’s just turned twenty seven,” he added. 

“Not too young, then,” Vicky said. “A love match, I do hope.”

“Vicky, darling,” her husband said, reaching out to take her hand, “from what we saw, I should think so!”

Cormoran could do nothing about the redness of his ears. 

In the library, Robin sat quietly, lost in the memory of the kiss she’d just shared. Of course, it had been an act, but it hadn’t really felt like an act in the moment. Only after, when she’d pulled back, had she been Venetia. 

“Hey, Venetia! Venetia Ro-ose, you with us?”

“What?” She jolted out of her reverie to find the others staring at her, grinning mostly. She’d been twisting her pearl ring around and around her finger.

“Thinking about Eric again?” Annie teased. “He’s a tall drink of water, I’ll give you that.”

“That scar on his lip gives him character,” Sasha added, grinning slyly at Robin. She scrunched up her nose at the younger girl.

“Leave her alone,” Jeremy said, unexpectedly coming to her rescue. “Focus, can you? Do you want to do this or not?”

“Do what?” Robin asked, reminding herself to stay in her Venetia voice.

Merritt leaned forward excitedly. “Apparently there’s a place like an hour away where you can drive as fast as you like.” He sounded eager, like a little boy.

“Merr, it’s not like that,” Cait said. “It’s a racing track, but they let you ride with the racers while they’re practicing,” she said, eyes gleaming. “You go wicked fast, and if you’re really good or really rich, sometimes they let you drive.”

Robin felt a surge of excitement; this was something she’d love to do. She knew, though, that Venetia Rose Ashworth would not feel at all the same way.

“That sounds terrifying,” she said with a tiny shudder. “I’d probably panic.”

“So you don’t want to come?” Jeremy sounded disappointed. “We were thinking we’d go this afternoon.”

“I don’t think so,” Robin said, truly regretful. “I’ll probably be bored,” she lied.

“That’s alright, I’m not going either,” Annie said, patting her hand. “We can hang out! And maybe some of the new arrivals will be fun!”

“That sounds lovely,” Robin said, smiling at Annie. “Did you bring any nail varnish? Only my pedi’s chipping already and I didn’t bring any.”

“I didn’t, but we can go into town!” Annie said. “We’ll get some!”

Merritt and Jeremy were already talking about how fast they wanted to go and discussing whether they’d be able to drive. Hannah and Cait were sitting by a laptop, comparing routes and prices, with Sasha looking over their shoulders.

“Excuse me, would you?” Robin said to Annie. “I’m just going to-” she couldn’t think of where she’d be going, only that she didn’t feel there was a place for her here.

“No worries,” Annie said. “I’ll come find you later, after this bunch has left.” 

Robin smiled at her, grateful, and left.

As she walked down the corridor, she felt as though she was always leaving rooms and never arriving anywhere. Where did she want to be?

The sound of a lively conversation was coming from the dining room. Two of the staff members, tall men, were coming down the hall carrying another table. She stepped out of their way, and decided to go for a wander in the gardens. It was sunny out, and crisp, and she needed to clear her head. She headed back to her room to grab her coat and scarf.

On her way there, she passed the billiards room, where the older group had apparently been chivvied off to by the staff. She walked quietly past the doors, but stopped when she heard her name- well, Venetia’s name.

“So tell us about your young lady, Eric!” One of the unfamiliar women’s voices said. “Your Venetia. How did you meet her?”

“Ah,” Cormoran said. She knew from the sound of his voice what his expression was, and stifled a smile. “Well, I work for a company which builds flats, and we had a holiday party, what two years ago, when Venetia’s brother still worked for us. And she was his date to the party, only of course she was with her brother, so she wandered off.”

“Of course,” the woman’s voice said. Robin couldn’t see any of the people in the room from the angle she was at, and she was afraid to move for fear she’d be seen. 

“I saw her at the bar and I thought…” His voice trailed off, and Robin held her breath, wondering what he’d say next. They’d decided all of this story beforehand, of course, but this was another level. This they hadn’t planned.

“I thought she was the loveliest girl I’d ever seen,” Cormoran finally said. “She was like a painting, like a masterpiece by Raphael, or, or Titian. Looking at her was like.... springtime, when all the snow melts and the flowers bloom.” He coughed. 

A woman sighed, then laughed. “That’s so sweet. Isn’t it sweet, Louis?”

“It’s very sweet, dear,” a man said dryly. 

“So? What did you do next?” 

“I asked her what she wanted to drink, of course,” Cormoran said. “She was at the bar. She wanted champagne, only there wasn’t any left, so I got her a white wine and asked her to dance. Apparently, I was the only bloke to ask, more fool them. Luckiest thing I ever did.”

Robin’s hand was curled on her chest. His voice was so soft when he talked about her, so gentle. Was he faking that? She thought he must be, only she wasn’t sure how anyone could.

“Ah, to be young and in love,” Arty said. Freya made a noise of laughing indignation. “Now, darling, we are old and in love!” he finished.

“Not so old yet,” Freya said, her voice tender. 

“Hardly old at all!” The other woman said. “Let’s have a round of bridge, and I’ll show you how young I am.”

“Vicky,” Freya laughed, “you realize that that sentence makes you sound old, all by itself, don’t you?”

“Hush, Florrie, and let me beat you at cards,” Vicky said. 

“Also, there’s seven of us, and bridge calls for four,” another man’s voice pointed out.

“I can sit out,” Cormoran volunteered at once. The other voices began debating what to do, and Robin took the chance to slip away down the hall.

She pulled on her coat and scarf and put gloves in her pockets, and found her way out into the garden, in a daze. She couldn’t stop replaying that morning’s kiss- or the kiss from the night before- or the kiss before that- and she knew, she knew, that this had all gotten entirely out of hand. 

She crunched along a gravel pathway that meandered through gardens that must be lovely in warmer weather. “What have I done?” she asked aloud, her breath clouding white in the crisp October air. “What am I doing?”

The trees had no reply. She touched a chill hand to her lips, where the ghost of Cormoran still lingered. The way he’d talked about her, when he hadn’t known she was listening- “like springtime, when the snow melts and all the flowers bloom.” 

She realized that she’d been standing still, one arm hugging her own waist with her other hand pressed to her lips, for God knows how long. Her nose and cheeks were cold.

“You’ve got to pull yourself out of this, Robin,” she scolded herself, turning around to walk briskly back towards the house, which had shrunk in the distance, only glimpses visible through the gaps in the foliage. “You can’t go pining for a man who’s only pretending to be in love with you.”

But the thought, the possibility, the tantalizing wisp of hope remained: what if he, too, was only pretending to pretend?

Through the window of the billiard room, Cormoran looked out over the grounds, sipping a delightfully rich Burgundy and eavesdropping on the conversation Arty and Rhys were having. He could see, through the trees, movement, and it clarified into the figure of Robin, striding along in her coat and a purple scarf, her head down. He wished she would look up, see him. She did not. He took another sip of wine, wondering why she was out alone. Wondering why she hadn’t asked him to come with her.

She knew you were busy, the pragmatic part of his brain said. She’s avoiding you, said another, meaner part. She’s tired of being around you so much. 

He shook his head and took a deeper drink. It didn’t matter. They were working. None of this was real. He could still taste Robin on his lips, through the richness of the wine. He drank again. It wasn’t real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working so much, the muse doesn't want to play. But! There's so much more! Thank you all for being such wonderful readers. New characters will be up on the tumblr page ASAP! As always, ask if you have questions, suggestions, or concerns! xxx


	17. what a pear (we two make)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin paints her nails; Cormoran gets a smear of chocolate on his lip.

Robin felt the afternoon pass her by in a sort of blur- she was sure she’d been talking and laughing and doing things, only when she looked back on it, she couldn’t think of a single thing she’d said. Annie had found her and they’d sat and first undone their professional pedicures before painting their toenails, green for Annie and for Robin, bright blue. Robin had let Annie steer the afternoon, choosing the music, telling stories of her famous clients.

“Venetia, are you okay?” Annie asked her finally. “It’s just that you’ve been staring at the window for like five minutes and I don’t think we’re on the same astral plane right now.”

“What? Oh, no, I’m fine,” Robin lied, clearing her throat to get into the proper voice. She was wishing the persona she’d created didn’t have a different tone and pitch than her usual speaking voice, but she felt much more authentically like Venetia when she spoke that way, so she was trapped. “I’m fine, just thinking about, you know…”

“Eric?” Annie asked with a little eyebrow waggle. She capped her nail varnish, having finished with her toes, and slid from her chair to the floor to look up at Robin. “I know you’re engaged. Are you planning the wedding?”

“Oh,” Robin said. “Well, yes, we’ve started planning, but he’s been a bit slow on that. He’s waiting on a promotion at work, you see,” she said, inventing as she went along, “and he doesn’t want us to be planning with a larger budget until he’s sure of it.”

“Good for him,” Annie said, nodding. Robin hoped she’d move on to another topic. Just then, her stomach let out an audible gurgle. She looked down, dismayed. Annie laughed, a bright, loud sound, utterly relaxed and unafraid.

“Okay, maybe it’s snack time!” Annie pulled out her phone to check the time. “No, shit, it’s like twenty minutes to when dinner’s served, you’d better finish with that nail polish. Do you have any open-toed shoes?”

Robin mutely shook her head, tossing back her hair so she could finish painting the last three toes.

“I need my flip flops, but I’m pretty sure Cait packed some too, lemme see if I can find them.” Annie went through one of the suite’s bedroom doors. Robin capped the nail varnish and wiggled her toes, the pink replaced by a color labelled “Frostbite” that shimmered deeply cobalt. “Got ‘em!” Annie called. “How small are your feet?”

“Ah…” Robin held up one bare foot. Annie handed her the pair and Robin slipped them on. “A little big, but they’ll do. Thanks,” she said gratefully. 

“No problem! It’s nice to have company,” Annie said comfortably. “Obviously I love Merritt, but he’s a boy and he travels a lot, and Cait’s amazing but she’s always on her phone, I swear to God. And when she’s not working, she’s chasing the next adrenaline rush.”

Robin made a noncommittal sound and gathered herself up. The shoes she’d been wearing, the sweater she’d discarded, and where was her phone….

“Here, you had it charging,” Annie said, handing over the phone. “This was nice! I’ll see you at dinner in a few, right?”

“Yeah,” Robin said. “Absolutely. Thanks for the loan!” She pulled on a smile and wiggled her toes, meaning both the blue and the shoes.

“Any time,” Annie said, returning the smile. Robin let herself out and went to her own suite, planning to change into comfier clothing and drop off her now-unnecessary shoes. 

She was startled to find Cormoran napping on the sofa in their sitting room, head tilted back against the armrest and legs akimbo. He’d left his prosthetic on, and that leg dangled at an angle Robin was sure he would regret sooner rather than later.

Robin made sure the door was shut behind her before saying out loud, “Cormoran!” in a firm voice. He came awake all at once, which was unusual, in her experience.

“Whu’?” Right, that’s the Cormoran she knew and lo- worked with. 

“It’s nearly time for dinner,” she said. “Didn’t think you’d like to miss it.”

“Mm,” he said, rubbing on hand over his face. “Right. Thanks. Where’ve you been, then?”

“Over in Annie’s suite, having a girly afternoon,” she said, dropping her bundle onto her bed as she selected a new top to wear. The tank she’d worn under her sweater had been fine as a bottom layer, but really wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny. She pulled a nice sleeveless blouse she’d gotten secondhand off a hanger.

“Did you swap secrets? Chat about boys?” Cormoran called through the open door. Robin had assumed he’d stay on the couch, knowing how long it took him to rise, and left the door open. She was wriggling out of her tank, leaving her bra on, when she heard him stand up. She began moving faster, realizing her error.

“Oh, I let her do most of the chatting,” Robin said, trying to sound casual as she reached for the top laying on the bed. The footsteps were coming towards the door. She had her back to it, pulling the top over her head quickly. She spun to face Cormoran, who was standing in the doorway. 

“I told her that we haven’t done much wedding planning yet because you’re waiting on a promotion at work,” Robin said quickly. Cormoran was gazing at her with the sort of open, soft expression she’d come to associate with Eric, and it was throwing her off balance. Everything about this day- this week- this job- it was all throwing her off balance.

“All right,” Cormoran said agreeably. “Good to know. That top makes your hair look extra gold,” he added. 

“Oh,” Robin said, taken aback. She’d rather liked how the deep red set off her coloring, but it wasn’t like Cormoran to comment on what she was wearing. “Thank you.”

“Mm” he said. “Dinner’s soon, yeah? We should head down.”

“Yeah,” she said in reply. “Give me a moment?”

“Sure,” he said, and went away from the door. Robin grabbed her hairbrush for want of something to do with her hands, and began pulling it through her hair in long, even strokes. She let the familiar movement soothe her.

“I’m ready,” she said a minute later. “Shall we?”

As they moved down the hall, Cormoran looked down at her feet. She was wearing flip flops, which was totally out of character for her.

“What’s with the shoes?” he asked, looking back ahead. Robin shifted a look up at him.

“Annie and I did pedis,” she replied. “As girls do.”

Cormoran couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips at her tone. They rounded the corner, and there ahead was a few of the others, heading for dinner as well. The safety of viewers now afforded to him, Cormoran slung and arm around Robin’s shoulders, pulling her into him and kissing her temple.

“As girls do,” he said into her sweet-smelling hair. She’d tensed when he first pulled her, and he’d regretted it for a long moment even as he kissed her, but then she shifted against him, relaxing and leaning towards his body.

“Come on,” she said, tugging at him, “I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

“Famished, kitten,” he said, and let her pull him into the dining room. There were now even more people than when he’d gone to take a nap, and Cormoran was distinctly aware that the comfortable portion of this job was over. If one could call what had happened thus far comfortable. But now, as the guests trickled in, they would need to be on the lookout for more behaviors, more tells, from more people, and hove to maintain a consistent front to an increasing number of sides. He pressed another kiss to Robin’s temple before letting go of her to sit down.

They could handle it. Robin might be inexperienced, but she was improving, and she wasn’t afraid to ask him questions or tell him things, which could have been half the battle. And it hadn’t been hard to convince the others that they were in a real relationship. He thought he ought to be more worried about how easy that aspect had been, actually, but he’d been carefully avoiding that line of thought thus far and had no plans to change his course of action now. After it was over, he’d have the time for self-reflection and a frank appraisal of his feelings. Here, as steaming platters of roast beef and potatoes and brussels sprouts were being carried in, was not the time or the place.

He let the conversation ebb and flow around him, making the proper noises in the proper places as he ate his way methodically through some of the best food he’d ever had in his life. Eric was developing a reputation as a “strong but silent type” and he was absolutely curating that. Not having to make endless small talk was a gift horse he was not about to look in the mouth.

He took another bite of potato and nearly made an indecent sound. Serge was a genius. An absolute bloody genius. He was going to gain weight on this job, he absolutely knew it, and he didn’t care. 

“Venetia,” he heard Vicky say, “your man there seems to be having a sort of religious awakening over that spud.”

He opened his eyes to find himself the object of several amused gazes. He turned to Robin, mouth still full, and hoped she wouldn’t say anything rude about his weight. Instead, Arty spoke next, surprising them both.

“A man’s heart is indeed through his stomach! Ma cher, perhaps you should ask Serge for some tips, before he leaves you for my chef!” Arty said this with a twinkle in his eye, but Robin felt a brief surge of- something- not jealousy, but something, at the thought of Cormoran leaving her for anyone else at all. She smiled, in the sort of sweet, slightly empty way Venetia had.

“Oh, I don’t know, Arty. You can get to man’s heart through his stomach, but I’ve found it’s faster to go between the fourth and fifth ribs.” She kept her smile on and took a mouthful of roast.

There was a pause, then Arty laughed, a great mirthful roar. “Well said! Yes! It would be faster, would it not, monsieur docteur?”

One of the unfamiliar faces, a man with a shock of red hair, nodded and grinned. “The lady is correct,” he said, nodding to Robin. “Much faster than the stomach, if a touch more lethal.”

Robin, chewing, continued to smile. Cormoran took a deep drink of water to clear his throat. He’d had to swallow quickly to keep from choking when Robin had said pleasantly how she’d kill him. She was serenely cutting up her roast, and he thought, for just a moment, how easy it would be to be absolutely in love with her. But of course, that was Eric speaking, not him. He took another sip of water and tried not to make eye contact with anyone.

Dessert that night smelled heavenly before it even appeared. Cutting into the baked pear half sitting atop a layer of flaky pastry, melted chocolate poured out of the pear to pool amid the pastry. Robin cut hers into delicate pieces and ate each with eyes closed, savoring the sweetness. Cormoran’s, in contrast, disappeared swiftly. He finished his and silently watched her eat, and enjoyed the dessert even more as she luxuriated in each bite.

The rest of the table ate theirs with just as much relish, leaving the room nearly silent but for the clink of forks and the sighs of pleasure. Robin finished her pear as most of the diners were doing the same; conversation began to resume, mostly people asking each other what they thought of the meal.

Robin turned to Cormoran to ask him something, and forgot when she saw a streak of chocolate just on his lip.

“You’ve got-” she said, gesturing to his mouth.

“What?” He licked his lips, getting most of it. 

Robin leaned over, wiping the rest of it off with her thumb before thinking any further about it. Cormoran, his hand raised to wipe his own mouth, didn’t move; Robin froze in surprise at what she’d done, her hand hovering by his face. Slowly, not taking his eyes off of hers, Cormoran leaned forward, taking her wrist and slowly, thoroughly licking the chocolate off her thumb.

Robin felt as though everything had stopped. Was she blushing? She couldn’t tell. Was anyone looking at them? What was he doing? What was he thinking? Staring at Cormoran, she could feel the ghost of his tongue on her thumb, and she didn’t move to pull away from him, his hand still loosely gripping her wrist. She licked her lips, drawing his eyes down to her mouth. She wondered, with the part of her brain that wasn’t cataloging every breath, every press, the exact way his mouth had moved, she wondered what it would feel like for him to do that to other parts of her body, the gentleness and firmness of it, the absolute focus of him turned to her, and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t, he was going to lean forward, he was going to-

Before anyone noticed or commented on the tiny drama happening at the table, a much larger drama came in through the doors, the group who’d gone off to the racing track coming in windswept and exhilarated.

“We’ve missed dinner!” Sasha exclaimed.

“No worries, Serge has some set aside for you, my wayward friends,” Arty said, standing to greet them and perform more introductions. Robin and Cormoran, who had both turned to the door, turned back to each other.

Cormoran released her wrist, and she pulled her arm back from him. He licked his lips once more; she closed her mouth, and knew she was most certainly blushing. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Ah,” Cormoran said, clearing his throat. Robin blinked at him, and suddenly words rose, burning on her lips.

“If you apologize to me, I will kill you,” she hissed. He looked startled. She couldn’t bear it anymore. He couldn’t have done it for anyone else’s benefit, for no one had been paying attention, she didn’t think, but why else would he have done it- licked your thumb, supplied her brain helpfully, he licked your thumb- he made no sense! 

She turned away from him, from his wide eyes and open mouth, the scar she’d just run her thumb over practically begging her to taste it once more- she turned away and brightly asked the nearest person how their trip had been. The red-haired doctor, oblivious to the tension that had so recently broiled up not three feet away, chatted about his flight, Robin nodding along, absently rubbing her fingers over her thumb under the table.

Cormoran quietly excused himself. He needed a smoke. He desperately, fervently needed a smoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay! I work retail, and the holiday season is coming up with a vengenace. I've been working 10+ hours a week more than I was when I started this fic, so chapters are almost certainly going to slow down. However, I know where this behemoth is going, and it might take forever but it WILL continue and eventually get to the end! (not for a good long while, though. We haven't even met Hjort yet!) 
> 
> Quick notes: This chapter is dedicated to my girl LindMea. Hope this makes up for the day you've had! The nail polish Robin wears is on the character/etc page on my tumblr, linked below. Here's a video of [the preparation of the pear dessert,](https://www.facebook.com/ChefClub.tv/videos/1782591005098838/) because it's amazing and delicious to look at.
> 
> Thanks, as ever, for your love and support. Onwards!


	18. arrivals: a change in itinerary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things never go quite to plan, do they.

The red-haired doctor said his name was Malcolm MacGregor and was a relaxed conversationalist, easily amusing those around him with funny stories from the emergency room of the hospital where he had worked in his residency. Robin found it easy to nod and laugh and not pay close attention, her fingers still rubbing her thumb, over and over.

He licked my thumb, she thought to herself, flatly incredulous. My thumb. She did not, at all, think about the pool of heat that had coiled itself in her stomach, or the way he had fled her presence. She focused on the crowd around her, fixing names to faces, watching the way people reacted to each other. It was easy to see the old friends, the new rivals, the subtle eddying currents of interpersonal relationships flowing around her.

Robin knew that there were some guests here only for the first weekend, and others coming part-way through the week, and was wondering how she would survive until their mark arrived when there was another flurry at the door.

“Laurence! Peter! You’re here early!” Freya said, leaning back from her place at the head of the table to extend a hand to the two men. “I thought you were coming on Wednesday!”

“We were,” the one who must be Laurence said. “And then there was a dust-up at work, and we’ve been sent off early to atone for our sins.” He bent over Freya to kiss her on both cheeks, his black hair gleaming in the light.

“And what were your sins, you terrible boys?” Arty asked as he strode forward to clasp Peter’s hand.

“Nothing too bad,” Laurence was saying, and Robin knew she should be listening, but there he was, all at once, as though she had summoned him with a thought. Peter Hjort.

She smiled and nodded as they were introduced around, studying him. He looked as he had in the photos- blandly handsome, the kind of schoolboyish good looks that made you want to pinch his cheek, which in fact Freya did. He smiled easily at everyone, and Robin could see how his eyes took in the room as hers had- noting relationships, body language. Arty was gesturing for more food to be brought in as he pointed to each guest, telling Peter and Laurence everyone’s names.

“You remember Malcolm from last year- yes- and this is Venetia, and her- well, her fiance’s off somewhere, you’ll meet him later-”

Robin made sure to make eye contact with both men, waving with her left hand, letting the ring catch the light. The sapphire she’d once worn would be better for its flash, but oh, she loved this slim gold band with its pearl and diamonds. Even if it was Venetia’s.

Hjort had been smiling and nodding to everyone, and did the same to her. Robin let her eyes trace his face, blinked slowly at him, once. He paused for a moment before following Arty to his seat. Robin felt as though she’d made a good opening sally, and wondered if it had helped or hurt that Cormoran wasn’t there. She leaned forward as the doctor picked up the thread of his tale, wanting to leave but knowing it was better if she stayed. She arranged herself to be at best advantage from Hjort’s point of view and suppressed a sigh.

Well, at least things were about to be much more interesting than she’d feared.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's been months. Yes, I'm very sorry. Here's what I have as of now, and pray for the muse to come out to play for more. 
> 
> Thank you, everyone, for your patience. I promise I will, eventually, finish this beast. Maybe even before the next book!


	19. the undertow rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been a mistake. But he'd done it, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Cormoran stood in the shadow of one of the side doors, the last traces of the sunset turning the smoke from his cigarette into purple haze. He took another deep inhalation, letting the familiarity soothe his restlessness. 

Why had he done that? It had been impulsive, reaching for her, taking her thumb into his mouth. It was the sort of thing he might have done with Charlotte, actually, which she would have made a small production out of in order to shock or impress or discomfit those around them; he didn’t know what had possessed him to do it with Robin. It had been incredibly intimate and in fact a mistake. A huge mistake. A really bad mistake, in fact. This was not the time for- well, if he was honest with himself, which he’d been careful to not be- this was not the time for his feelings for Robin to take over his common sense.

_ Common sense, hah, _ he thought, coughing on his exhale.  _ Not one you’re known for when it comes to beautiful women, Strike.  _

And Robin was beautiful, and more than that she was smart and capable and she was his  _ business partner _ and she was relying on him, dammit, fuck it all to hell and back. He couldn’t- he had to- he sucked down another lungful of his cig, swearing internally. What a perfect fucking pickle he’d gotten himself into. Having to fake being in love with a woman he might very well be in love with, while the job demanded that he allow her to be seduced by a slimy womanizer with an agenda, when all he wanted was to leave fucking Eric and bloody Venetia here in France and take Robin to-

“Fuck,” he said out loud. “Fucking goddamn cock-sucking  _ shit-” _

A throat cleared itself behind him, and Cormoran would never admit to how high he jumped. One of the be-sweatered men who silently took care of the house stood there, one eyebrow raised slightly, and Cormoran felt very rumpled beneath his gaze.

“Monsieur Bunsen?”

“Ah-” Cormoran cleared his throat. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Your fiancee asks for you to return,” the man said. “She wished me to tell you that the swedish chef has arrived and that she would like to introduce you.”

Cormoran nodded, hoping the man would take the hint. “I’ll be in shortly,” he said, and the man nodded and went away.

The swedish chef? He took one last pull of his cig, wondering what she meant by-

The Swedish Chef, the Muppet. Hjort was Swedish.  _ Heart, _ he knew it was pronounced, but he still thought of the man as  _ Huh-jort, _ and Robin could only have meant that he was  _ here.  _ Cormoran remembered talking about the man needing a nickname, but they hadn’t come up with one, and now he was  _ here _ and Robin had sent for him. 

Stubbing out his cigarette in a potted plant, Cormoran felt as though he was riding atop a wave of emotion and was only just keeping his balance. The simmering tension with Robin, which was its own issue, now compounded with Hjort’s sudden early arrival, before they were really prepared for him, along with every other tiny stressor in his life, were churning together, and he was precariously atop it all. He was curiously calm, but he knew it was only temporary; it would last only as long as he could stay above it. The moment he faltered, the undertow would pull him under, and he would drown.

So all he had to do was stay steady. At least for tonight, at least until he could get behind several closed doors. Robin’s face as she told him not to apologize was clear in his memory, and he knew he could not avoid what he had started with her. But he could keep things together until they were back in their suite, at least.

Cormoran took a steady breath before heading back to the dining room. The low, steady rumble of conversation was audible nearly thirty paces from the door, underscoring to him how fast things were moving; the intimacy of the past two days was gone now. He would be, must be, Eric Bunsen, at all times. And Hjort had arrived.

He smiled in acknowledgement of Hannah and Cait and Merritt, who looked up at his arrival, and nodded to the few others who made eye contact with him as he stumped back around to his seat. Robin was listening to the doctor, who was telling a story with expansive gestures to a rapt audience. 

“Oh, there you are, teds,” Robin said, turning to face him as he nearly dropped into his chair. “Enjoy your smoke?”

“‘Course,” he replied, leaning forward as if to kiss her cheek. Robin ducked her head towards him. 

“He’s down by Arty and Freya.”

He nodded, letting Robin take his hand and lace her fingers with his, the ring he’d bought her carefully visible atop the table. It shouldn’t be so easy to be with her, he thought, and there was a queasy rumble in his stomach as she settled herself near him, seemingly content. He shouldn’t want to pull her closer, wrap an arm around her waist and tug her into his lap. 

He could, of course, do that. It wouldn’t be out of place here, where people were openly affectionate. Glancing around, he could see at least two couples who’d pulled their chairs together and were tucked in cozily. It would be easy to do the same with Robin- with Venetia. 

But it was upset the balance. And he had to maintain the balance. So he let their hands rest on the table as he looked around the room, careful to appear only curious and mellow. Affable, imperturbable, forgettable. That was Eric. He allowed his gaze to rest on Hjort for only a few moments, cataloguing him, then moving to the man on Freya’s other side, dark to Hjort’s light. 

In person, Cormoran could understand better how Hjort had managed to break up happy marriages, how he’d convinced customers to do things so patently against their best interests. There was a kind of magnetism to his gaze, a focus and intensity to him, that would be hypnotic to the unsuspecting. To be his sole focus would be to feel like the center of the universe. It was the same kind of power that Charlotte had, to make you feel so special, so important, that you’d do what you were asked, because you wanted to be worthy of that focus.

His fingers tightened in Robin’s grip, and she turned back to look at him.

“You alright, love?” Her eyes were scanning his face, and he let her see him, for just a moment. Then he shut himself back away behind Eric’s relaxed posture, smiling and raising their hands so he could kiss her fingers.

“Just fine, kitten,” he said. “Might go to bed early, though. Got a bit of a headache.”

“Oh, is it back?” she asked, playing along at once. “I’ll ask one of the servants to bring you a hot flannel later.”

“Thanks, kitten,” he said. “Don’t let me keep you from your fun, though.”

“How can I have fun when my poor teddy is ill?” she pouted, and he could have kissed her right then. She was so exactly like the women Charlotte had disdained, the ones who lived their lives revolving around whichever man was paying their bills. She was brilliant. 

“At least let me get you some more water,” she said, waving her free hand to summon a server with a pitcher. It was enough to call Hjort’s attention back to her, as she’d hoped, and Robin let her glance catch on his for just a split second, just enough to hopefully intrigue him, before turning back to Cormoran. 

“I won’t duck out too early,” he said, taking a sip of his fresh water. It was cool against his dry throat. “I have to finish whipping Jeremy at billiards.”

“Don’t stay up too late,” she said, solicitous. 

“Midnight, no later,” he promised. 

“Midnight,” she agreed. The look in her eye was hard and sharp as flint. They had to talk things out.

He could hold up until midnight. It was already- he glanced at the mantle- fuck. Not nearly as close as he’d thought. 

Robin reached out, patting his cheek, letting her nails scratch his beard just slightly before turning away to ask Camellia about the vacation she’d mentioned. Cormoran sighed. No, midnight was an eternity away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll see if I can keep up the pace! Thank you all for your incredibly lovely words, they are the fuel my muse needs~
> 
> A reminder that there's a page on my blog that details OCs, fashion details, and other sundries for this little universe. Only available in browser view, alas, but hopefully helpful! I'll update it soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Check my tumblr [fic tag for updates on the status of the next chapter.](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/tagged/eyes-will-tell-fic)
> 
> This fic was originally based on prompts 5, 8, 10, 17, 30 and 31 from ["the way you said I love you" prompts](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/post/165060775039/) and will hopefully get around to all of those eventually.
> 
> Title from the song "Blue Venetian Waters," originally written for the Marx Brothers movie "A Day at the Races," which has been performed by various artists.
> 
> Share this fic on tumblr using [this post](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/post/166523374814/)!


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